


The Year Time Stopped

by margaux_margo



Category: La casa de papel | Money Heist (TV)
Genre: Alzheimer's Disease, Backstory, Canon Compliant, Declarations Of Love, Developing Relationship, Domestic Bliss, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Consent, F/M, Falling In Love, Family Bonding, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, Making Love, Palawan (La casa de papel), Past Domestic Violence, Post-Season/Series 02, Pre-Season/Series 03, Sex, Shameless Smut, Soulmates, Sweet/Hot, The Philippines, parenting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2020-08-19 05:55:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 95,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20204815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/margaux_margo/pseuds/margaux_margo
Summary: The moment that Raquel sees Sergio at the bamboo bar in Palawan, they face an opportunity to build a life with one another. In the hours, weeks, and months that follow, they bravely excavate the pain of their complex pasts and navigate the challenges of caring for a child and aging parent, all while enjoying the unmatched pleasure of having found one's soulmate—and having risked everything to be together.This canon-compliant fic covers the emotionally textured year of life between Seasons 2 and 3. Backstories are interwoven throughout, including anecdotes from childhood and young adulthood, which reveal their motivations, fears, and revolutionary values. Their shared social consciousness deepens against the backdrop of local Visayan culture as they continue learning about themselves through one another.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am so grateful to everyone who hit their keyboards and vid editing programs in the days following Season 3. I was desperate to engage in conversation about Raquel, and to see how others around the world were interpreting and experiencing her character and her choices. This community delivered. So this fic is my attempt to give back, and to say thank you to all the dedicated creators out there.
> 
> I'd love to hear what you think: what works, what doesn't, and what feels in character to you!
> 
> Only certain chapters are Mature/Explicit, so I'll warn you in the chapter-specific notes, if so.
> 
> Update April 19, 2020: It has truly been an honor to write this fic for all of you. I never expected this kind of response and it continues to be a surprising and incredible experience sharing this journey with you. A new reader recently pointed out that comment chains on this fic often become meaty psychological or sociological discussions, so I just wanted to assure you: no pressure to engage in deep discourse! LOL. I enjoy, appreciate, and respect a simple primal "Squee!" as much as the next creator. ;-) Just be yourselves and emote however you wish, whatever that means to you. Enjoy! <3 <3 <3

Raquel felt her mouth open slightly, wanting to speak. Her breath hitched and no sound came out.

Everything she'd dreamt of saying to Sergio for 383 days evaporated in an instant, and surprisingly, she didn't mind. It was delightfully freeing to be completely without words. She felt the corners of her mouth turn upward at the irony.

Sergio—the beautiful, bespectacled man sitting on a stool just a meter beyond her reach—broke into a pure, joyful grin that looked like a mirror of how she felt. She saw in his soulful eyes the same series of feelings that coursed through her: elation and relief, longing and regret, and an undercurrent of irrational, undeniable love.

She hoped he could detect every emotion within her right now, because she knew that even once her words returned, she wouldn't be able to express a tenth of what she felt.

Sergio blinked rapidly behind the black rims of his glasses, as if taken aback by the magnitude of what emanated from her and what he felt in return. His lips separated—perhaps wanting to speak—but instead of intensely articulate words flowing out of his mouth, he appeared to be struck silent, flooded by more simultaneous emotion than he could comprehend, much less communicate. She knew exactly how he felt.

She laughed suddenly, at both of them, two chronically decisive people, their supposedly strategic minds rendered speechless. Like the best kind of contagion, she watched Sergio repress a laugh too. Though he didn't make a sound, his chest and shoulders rose and fell, several times, as if the air held hostage by his lungs was slowly making its escape. It felt good to laugh. It felt good to laugh with him.

Without breaking eye contact, she inhaled deeply, then exhaled slowly, and he did the same. They shared a second, then a third, measured inhale and exhale. She tried to convey with her eyes that it was okay—neither of them needed to talk, not yet. Neither of them had anything to prove to the other. His thankful smile and slight nod told her he agreed. She was struck by how uncanny it was that they could communicate without speaking, and right now, she could tell they each wanted the same thing: to appreciate the sight of one another on this far flung Philippine island.

She surveyed every inch of him. He looked healthy, he was glowing, and in a surreal coincidence, he was dressed in white, like her. The symbolism nearly made her giggle like an adolescent; she bit the inside of her lip to keep from bursting. The way he sat on the barstool gave him the countenance of a man who was no longer worried about physical survival. Clothing, food, and shelter were not of concern. What kept him from seeming even the tiniest bit like an elitist asshole were his trademark eyes: as painfully deep and unselfish as ever. She spotted something else in them, something new, something she hadn't seen before. They had a sheen she couldn't quite pinpoint. If she had to guess, she'd describe it as an existential fear—perhaps of loneliness. Yes, that was it; she was sure of it. He looked like a man who'd spent a year at sea, well-fed and protected from the elements, but unable to dock at the only place in the world he wanted to be. Her heart raced as it hit her: she was the harbor. It wasn't her ego telling her she inexplicably completed him; it was her heart informing her she felt the same about him. He was her harbor. He was her port. He was home.

Back when they were Inspector and Professor, they'd been constantly competing, tragically well-matched chess opponents locked in what would've been an unending war of strategic oneupmanship and destructive attrition. But once that farce—that unimportant layer of circumstance and social construction—fell away, she'd discovered his true, singular identity, and she saw that without either of them trying, they were two beings who accepted one another as is: without hesitation or explanation or caveats; without any need to perform or pretend or impress. Her soul would forever be bared before his and her internal polygraph told her she was wholly and completely adored for everything she was and anything she wasn't. That's how his current gaze felt on the delicate skin of her soul.

She watched Sergio turn on his barstool so he was facing her completely. She assumed he wanted to be entirely seen by her, just as she wanted to be entirely seen by him.

All of a sudden, a bolt of electricity sped up her spine as she recognized what it all meant. This was the feeling of unconditional love. She felt it _for_ him—and _from_ him—right now. She always had.

She knew her smile was deepening into a ridiculous, loopy grin—but she didn't care how she appeared. In the past year, she'd grown more confidently self-assured than she'd ever thought possible. She hadn't hardened or become callous or even numbed. Not at all. She just legitimately didn't give a fuck what anyone else thought about her anymore, whether pundits, the public, or former friends. She only cared what Paula thought, and to a certain extent, her mother. The once-brilliant woman was suffering from dementia, and her mom's ability to remain tethered to reality was slipping away faster than Raquel had let herself realize until she'd resigned from the force and begun this sabbatical of indeterminate length. It was only then that she'd noticed her mom wasn't just getting older, she was suffering from a condition Raquel had allowed herself to ignore—burying the obvious beneath work responsibilities and custody battles and the journey of self-acceptance as she'd come to terms with the fact that she'd spent years in an abusive marriage.

Blinking herself back to the present, she became aware of the southern hemisphere sun on her back, the bamboo bar to her right, and Sergio seated on a barstool, his joyous grin now gone. Pain riddled her chest as she noticed a pall had fallen over his eyes. Evidently, he had felt her drift away, even for that briefest of moments when she'd journeyed back to the dark times, the times before they'd met, the times when she'd covered up her bruises with professional accolades and a toxic salve of emotional self-flagellation. She'd spent years as a battered spouse, and never once thought of protecting herself like she protected strangers every day. She'd been a prisoner to her fear of Alberto's rage and to an even deeper fear that she was just as worthless and shameful and deserving of each blow as she appeared in his eyes.

For the second time in just a few minutes, Raquel's breath caught in her throat, but this time for a very different reason. She was her old self again: unable to speak, unable to reconcile her view of herself with reality, unable to communicate to herself—much less to anyone else—what was really going on. She felt the chilling physiological memory of her old life consume her and all she wanted was to retreat into the far corner of a room, alone.

She startled, jumping at the sound of Sergio's stool scrapping against the concrete as he stood up with uncharacteristic clumsiness. Brows furrowed, open mouth poised to speak, he stepped tentatively towards her, lifting his hands slightly at his sides, as if wanting to reach out but not wanting to invade her space. He stopped short, half a meter away, apparently waiting for permission to come closer. His eyes were frightened—frightened for her—and she could feel how desperately he wanted to help her find her way back.

And just like that, the dark spell of the past was broken, and she was here again, on Palawan, the unrelenting sun heating the back of her neck, her sandaled feet pleasantly sore, her eyes reconnecting with Sergio's. She felt a smile reemerge on her face; but this time, it felt different. It felt laden with the heaviness of the past—a past she would never have to return to, except in moments of crippling memory like the one she had just left.

He stood still, visibly tense, his eyes searching, trying to read the sorrow within her smile.

She placed her left hand over her heart and breathed deeply, slowly. He mirrored her movements and did the same, perhaps hoping that by matching the rhythm of her inhales and exhales, he was somehow helping her—and he was. Breathing together, even half a meter apart, she felt the last tendrils of the past disconnect from her limbic brain and retract into the shadows of neural tissue, returning to dormancy, leaving her in peace.

He must have felt certain she was okay because he let his arm fall to his side. Apparently he'd regained his composure too. He started to smile again, almost shyly, as if he'd heard her thought. Her heart melted as she felt the familiar feeling she'd only ever felt with him: he knew both how strong and how vulnerable she truly was. He didn't patronize her, didn't coddle, and yet he was there for her if she wanted him. She decided, conclusively, that she did.

No one would ever be able to understand that Sergio hadn't ruined her life; he'd been the key she didn't know she'd been searching for—the key that unlocked her ability to truly feel alive. A year ago, when the scales had fallen from her eyes, the world was no longer black and white, populated by good guys and bad guys, righteous systems and unjust agitators. And once those scales were gone, she had seen the only people who'd ever mattered: her mother, Paula, and him. She got her mom the meds she needed; she gave Paula the attention she craved. And even though she didn't dare to hope that she'd ever lay eyes on Sergio again, she privately reveled in her memories of their only two nights together. Those people—the two she saw daily and the one she thought was lost to her forever—were her singular focus these past twelve months. All other distractions fell away. The rest of Spain might have seen her as a ruined woman—intentionally dismantling her carefully constructed career with huge irrevocable moves. But she wasn't self-sabotaging, despite what her old friends from the force tried to get her to admit. She was evolving. This phoenix was on to bigger and better things.

As if he could hear her inner monologue, a gorgeous, gentle smile erupted across his face. Her already soppy heart melted even more.

She felt herself rushing forward before she even realized what she was doing. She stopped an inch from his tall frame, tilting her head back so she wouldn't lose eye contact. She decided that she loved this view of him from below because it was uniquely hers. No one could ever see him from exactly this angle. At her height, she was so near his heart, so near his lips. Being this close to him, still without touching, sent a tingling shockwave of heat from between her legs up the front of her body to her lower abdomen. Her breathing sped up and—_oh god!_—she was finally close enough to feel his hot breath on her face as his breathing sped up too.  
  
His arms hung at his sides in his familiar, almost comical, stance. He seemed to be respecting some unspoken rule they'd set: they were holding out as long as possible to touch one another. They were both rule-following, satisfaction-withholding idiots! She smirked at what a perfectly matched pair they were.

Heat radiated off his body. She wanted desperately to grab him, to end the suspense. Instead, she closed her eyes and breathed in.

She could smell him again. She knew she'd missed it but couldn't quite remember his scent until now. She could hear the quickening pace of his inhales. She could feel his warm exhales on her forehead. An otherworldly calm flowed through her from the crown of her head through the soles of her feet, as if her animal brain had been waiting to believe it was him until it received sensory confirmation that he wasn't a mirage or the product of a desirous imagination.

Opening her eyes, she blinked away the brightness of the sun and Sergio's devastating smile. She gazed up into his glistening eyes, ecstatic to see that he felt as deliriously happy as she did. A tear rolled off his cheek and landed on hers. She shivered at the thrill of the touch.

Only then did she realize that she had teared up too. She hadn't noticed because, except for at Paula's birth, she'd never cried from pure joy.

She grinned up at him like a lovestruck idiot, enjoying his look of equally idiotic contentment. She knew the world could come crashing down around them (again) and this time they wouldn't even notice. In a flash, she learned something she'd never known before. Bliss isn't a solo experience. True bliss can only be shared.

She slowly brought her right hand up and hovered her palm a centimeter from his cheek. She watched him laboriously swallow, his mouth obviously dry. She suppressed a laugh. A bead of sweat rolled down the bridge of his nose, ever so slightly causing his glasses to slip. He slowly and carefully lifted his right hand, apparently still committed to their game of not touching. With his thumb, he pushed his glasses back up his nose.

Not only was she so fucking in love with him, but he made her laugh, even without meaning to. She hadn't known it was possible to love everything about someone and love everything about yourself when you were with them.

For all the prying speculation and social portent in their unlikely soulmatch, this simple feeling was what it was about: she felt like the purest version of herself when she was with him. She didn't see the point in ever doing anything else.

She reached up with both hands and grabbed him behind his strong neck, pulling herself up to meet his lips. Her mouth crashed into his and all at once she could feel his soft lips again, just as she remembered, but even more tender. She could taste his mouth again, just as she remembered, but somehow sweeter. She inhaled as much of him as she could, as if his scent was the air she breathed. She felt his lips and beard nuzzling her neck, and she heard a woman moan indecently, only to realize the voice was hers. Her lips found his again to contain her indiscretion, moaning into his mouth, her sound intermixing with his.

Even though her eyes were closed, she was certain she could see his face: every hair and contour and shade. She released her grip on the back of his neck and moved her hands to caress his jaw and temples, and then she was doing it all again, in no apparent pattern, touching his face and neck and head as much as she could, her hands just as greedy as her lips, wanting nothing more than for this moment to never end.


	2. Chapter 2

Sergio never wanted this moment to end. If he kept his eyes shut, maybe it never would.

He felt Raquel's hungry lips on his. He struggled to keep up as she deftly pressed her tongue inside his mouth, as if frisking him, desperate to find out where he'd been for the past year. He didn't want her to stop but he did want her to know: _I've been r__ight here on this barstool, waiting for you. _He made a mental note to tell her as soon as this most-incredible-kiss-of-his-life came to an end. _If_ it ever came to an end.

He tried to silence his noisy internal monologue and fully tune in to the sensations he felt: his face gripped between Raquel's hands, his lips being kissed by hers, his heart beating like a bass drum. His whole body felt like an electric wire, trembling with energy he couldn't harness, atomic particles ricocheting through him with an almost audible buzz. He was relieved to feel his mouth finally moving in time with hers. He inhaled deeply. Her hair smelled of smoke from the fish and rice wrapped in banana leaves that his neighbors cooked in the streets. Her skin smelled of coconut oil and sweat and desire. Her mouth tasted like everything he ever wanted.

He felt her strong, desirous hands kneading the back of his neck, then her fingers were tugging at his hair, then her palms caressed the side of his face with surprising tenderness. And then he felt her doing it all again, touching his face and neck and head, never separating her lips from his.

He wanted to reach out and embrace her too, but his arms were stuck at his sides. His lips had gotten the hang of the kiss, but the rest of him felt frozen, unsure what to do. The night a year ago that he'd rightly called the best night of his life, he'd shocked himself with his inventiveness as he'd given her touch and planted kisses in all the places and in all the ways his limited imagination could conjure. And still it wasn't enough. He wanted to give her more. She deserved everything good and he didn't know how to do that, but all he wanted from life was the chance to try.

Maybe that's why he was crying. He loved her more than he knew how to communicate. But he would learn. He would study. He would figure out how to tell her that she'd given him more meaning, more purpose, than anything ever had—even the heist. The heist had provided a goal, a reason to push through illness, the death of his parents, and the hopelessness of a system that told him he was worthless to society. It gave him a reason to work tirelessly at getting healthy, at growing up. When Andrés was up all night with friends and drinks and partners, Sergio was up all night with ideas and strategies and plans. His brother was heedlessly seeking happiness, which Sergio called an irrational pursuit, while Sergio was driving toward the honorable and seemingly impossible achievement of generating billions without hurting a soul. His quest gave him energy for days and focus for years. The penultimate moment was honoring his father's memory and sending a message to the betrodden of the world; the finish line was printing just short of a billion Euros to distribute to his conscripted friends—that motley subset of the disenfranchised.

But when he was on the freighter off the coast of Portugal—mourning Moscow, Oslo, and most of all Andrés—he couldn't help but feel that he had failed. Not only had he failed to keep everyone safe, but he'd failed the personal quest he hadn't known existed until Raquel stared him in the face with her penetrating eyes. 2.4 billion Euros had been the red herring, the universe's way of distracting him from his true mission. The hundreds of millions they'd printed would help Nairobi find her son, and help Denver and Monica start a life together, but his share couldn't bring back the dead. It couldn't buy him safe passage to see Raquel.

He'd hated himself then, more than ever. He'd chastised himself in his bunk aboard the tanker. Why hadn't he come up with a better Plan B? Why hadn't he figured out how they could be together? Once he'd known, from her own lips, that she wanted to abscond too, why hadn't he moved mountains to make it happen? He always deprioritized his own desires; that was nothing new. But for once, his deepest desire was the mirror image of someone else's, and so by failing to keep them together, it meant Raquel was left longing too. Yes, as unbelievable as it seemed, he was, by all indications, able to inexplicably make her happy; and she, from her own attestations, wanted to be with him, as much as he wanted to be with her. And then, the North Atlantic sea would shift, and he'd be shaken from his cot, tumbling out of his tailspin of yearning and regret, and he'd remember that Raquel had only wanted to run away with him—her mother and daughter in tow—because she'd thought he was someone other than the criminal mastermind she'd been sparring with for days. The criminal mastermind who'd humiliated her in front of her colleagues and all of Spain. The criminal mastermind who'd uttered invasive, distorted words into her ear, advancing his agenda at her expense.

He felt Raquel press her entire body against his, as if she could sense his self-doubt and wanted to physically remind him she was here on Palawan, in the present. Her ardent kiss continued to feel amazing, mind-altering, actually, but he needed to repent, to start repaying her for the harm he'd caused. The Professor's actions against the Inspector should not be forgiven—not yet, maybe not ever, and certainly not lightly. He would tell her his intentions and ask her how to begin, right after this kiss, right after his tears. His tears slid indiscreetly down his cheeks. He winced as he tasted the salt, knowing she could taste it too. He hoped it wasn't a turnoff. As if in answer to his unspoken question, he felt her tongue probe his mouth more deeply.

His throat went dry as he became aware that she was now rubbing her body with greater intention against his, and he felt his heart soften and his member harden at the same time. He didn't need his eyes to be open to know the two of them were causing a scene in front of the friendly Filipino bartender who'd served him every day for the past year. Despite his anxiety about Jovelle watching, Sergio wanted so much to reciprocate Raquel's increasing fervor. Besides, it felt like she would escalate until they made themselves too memorable to escape local lore and maintain the low profile he'd cultivated. He needed to upskill, immediately, at physically communicating how he felt; she seemed to be wondering, her movement asking for response. He lifted his arms and found her bare shoulders with his fingertips. Carefully, he placed his hands on the smooth skin of her upper back. He felt her muscles flex under his palms, her hands grasping the sides of his face with extreme intensity and incredible gentleness.

His mouth sunk even deeper into hers. She was moaning now, into his, and he heard himself moan back in response. He hadn't planned it—it just happened. _He wondered if that was okay._ Although he'd had more than a year to anticipate this moment, he was utterly and completely unprepared. Even in the best case scenario, he'd pictured Raquel arriving in the Philippines slightly trepidatious and justifiably angry. He hadn't envisioned a scenario where she'd grab him passionately and make out with him instantly. Sure, he'd dreamt about it, unbidden. Hoped for it even. But hope was not a strategy and if he was one thing, he was strategic. She had surprised him with her speed, yet again. He needed to adjust his internal algorithm if he was going to keep up.

Her lips pulled away from his and he wanted to cry out, to beg her to not unpause time. They were safe right now. They were together right now. Right now, he was content and it hit him that he never had been before. He'd only ever wanted to be in the future, working toward the nearly impossible, eyes locked on the horizon, not the present. This was the first time he'd ever wanted to be exactly where he was.

He kept his eyes tightly shut, daring time to call him back into slavish obsession, refusing to acknowledge anything except for Raquel in his arms and him in hers. He surprised himself by sightlessly finding the tender skin of her neck with his lips. He heard her moan provocatively, vulnerably. Loudly. And then her lips were back on his, and she was _mmmming_ into his mouth. His shoulders relaxed as he realized she was just as content as he was. _Thank god the feelings were mutual._ He'd doubted himself this past year, more than ever, more than he'd ever doubted himself in his decades planning the heist. The heist had felt strategically safe. He could make plans and backup plans and backup plans for those backup plans, all based on social convention, police procedure, and predictable psychological patterns on a macro scale.

But anytime he thought about Raquel—which was every waking hour of every day since he'd last seen her—he realized how fatuous, how disrespectfully arrogant it was, to even begin to imagine that he understood how she felt. He refused to give in to his usual hubris or apply his predictive approaches to this being he loved. He even questioned his own infatuation with her, wondering if by daydreaming about her, he was invading her privacy yet again. So he decided to restrict his fantasies to their two shared nights together. As much as he wanted to imagine her with him on the island, domestically coupled and making a life together as they cared for Mariví and Paula, he shut down those visions as much as he could, and instead replayed, in painstaking detail, his real memories of every conversation they'd ever had.

The memory he clung to most was when they'd made their plan to leave Spain. She would wrap up the case; he would wrap up the cider. She had unequivocally chosen to be with him then, but that was back when she'd thought he was Salva. So as he'd waited on this beach for months that became a year, his untamable heart leaping every time a solo traveler strolled into the viewing hut, he had no way of knowing if she would choose him again—given that she'd since learned who he really was. In the hangar, the last time they'd seen one another, she'd called him closer and initiated a kiss, but he knew that she'd been under extreme stress then, chained up by him for god's sake. So he was under no illusion that her pronouncement, "I am with you," meant anything other than a temporary promise to not turn him in to the cops. In the year since he'd uncuffed her and she'd disappeared through that door, had she regretted her lapse in law abiding judgement? Had she reconstructed the heist and their relationship in hour-by-hour detail and been unable to contain her horror at how manipulative he'd been?

As if that self-defeating spiral of fear was not enough, he'd driven himself crazy, sitting at the bamboo bar, calculating how his lack of experience with romance and sex must have skewed his perspective on what they had shared. He spent days on end, staring at the ocean, marveling at the relative nature of love and how Raquel, surely, with all her experience and past lovers and even ex-husband had so many more points of reference than he did. He'd concluded it wasn't possible for him to mean as much to her as she meant to him. That was rational; it was natural. It was ultimately why he'd predicted she'd never come—or that if she came, she'd arrive with gun in hand, Interpol in tow.

Her lips were no longer on his.

"Sergio," she whispered his name, which reminded him he'd been thankfully wrong...at least about the first part. A shiver shot up his spine. In his rapture, he'd forgotten the second half of his prediction. Instantly, he felt chilled to the bone. "Sergio," she whispered again, as if coaxing him to wake up. But he was afraid to open his eyes. This was it. It had been too good to be true. This was how it ended. His momentary bliss had been her well-deserved revenge. If he were to open his eyes, he'd see the helmets and shields of the Interpol response team, and within seconds he'd be in cuffs, her gun to his head.

He felt his heart break, so distinctly, so convincingly, that for a split second he thought he was having a heart attack. Then he felt a bubbling realization rise up from his knotted stomach through his shredded heart, until it filled his head with frothy, lighter-than-air clarity: this was the repentance he sought. This was the price he would happily pay to the first and only woman he'd ever loved. He would spend the rest of his life in prison, but he'd be free of the mental labyrinth of this past year. At least he would finally know how she felt, what she thought. He no longer had to torture himself, pitting sound logic against juvenile hope. And best of all, Raquel would get the satisfaction she deserved—professionally, perhaps personally—of knowing she'd outplayed the man who'd appeared to get away with it all.

He sighed, having accepted his fate, and opened his eyes.

Raquel was smiling easily, gently. She was gazing up at him, into him. What he saw in her eyes released the vise on his heart. He didn't need to look around in order to know there was no SWAT team, no gun hidden beneath her skirt. Her eyes told him everything; they always had.

He obligingly tilted his neck forward under the guidance of her directive hands. She pressed her forehead up against his. They were nose to nose.

"Sergio," she said again, this time with portent in her tone. Her blissful smile morphed into a serious one. "I love you, too."

He stopped breathing. The world spun until the bar and hut and street blurred together into a muddy swirl with no left or right, no up or down. He felt like he was tumbling through space and unable to see, unable to ground himself in anything he'd experienced before. He closed his eyes and returned to the comfort of darkness. His forehead leaned heavily against hers.

"Dear? Are you okay?" Raquel's voice sounded worried. He abhorred himself for causing her concern; he was euphoric that she'd called him _dear_. "Sweetheart, talk to me." He gripped hold of her voice like the lifeline it was, and hauled himself back to the sensory world. He breathed in and breathed out and felt her do the same. Her warm breath on his face soothed his nerves like magic balm. He wiggled his toes in his shoes and anchored his heels to the ground.  
  
He reopened his eyes and blinked directly into Raquel's. He now had a name for her expression: it was love. He swallowed dryly, embarrassed to be seen by this stunning being in all his adolescent ineptitude and mortifying pantomime of inexperience. He wanted to take off his glasses and bury his face in his hands, but that would only make it more obvious how out of his depth he was. So he stayed still, not moving, breathing with her, forehead to forehead. At least he was good at doing nothing. "Is this real?" he heard himself ask, before he could stop himself from revealing his pathetic, earnest fear.

She laughed. It was the best sound he'd ever heard. "Does this feel real?" she asked seriously, knowingly, without a hint of sarcasm in her tone, rubbing her thumbs against the side of his neck for apparent emphasis.

He managed to nod, stupidly. Like someone without a vocabulary or the ability to use it.

"Good," she replied. "Because it feels real to me, too." Her eyes fell closed and she tilted her head to one side and her lips were on his again. _Heaven._ His mouth responded reflexively this time, instantly, without restraint, but the kiss only lasted a tender, timeless second. She returned her forehead to their shared position. She smiled. "Tell me..." she began, her eyes alight with curiosity, searching his. "How did you know to be here today? Is my phone tapped or am I being followed?"

"No, neither," he blurted, pulling his forehead away from hers so his insistence wouldn't feel oppressive. He wanted her to know she was safe from his invasive machinations. "I would never..." He straightened his spine and returned his arms to his sides. "I would never again violate your privacy, your trust." She'd survived a nightmarish sequence of loathsome men—pursuing her, blaming her, their disease of misogyny disguised as an obsession with her. He understood the Professor's targeting probably felt like more of the same. The Professor was dead; he had buried him back in Spain. "I promise you, Raquel, that since the moment you discovered who I was, I have never lied to you. I've never had you followed or had your belongings tapped. I've never surveilled you in any way."

She blinked up at him, forehead creased. Excruciating seconds passed. A slight, bemused smile appeared on her lips. "Thank you," she said solemnly. He watched her closely as she placed her palms upon his chest and patted, her eyes drifting down to the backs of her hands. "I appreciate it." She closed her eyes and inhaled so deeply, she seemed to grow two inches taller. She sighed heavily, as if clearing a memory. She slid her palms off his chest and each of her hands found one of his. His heart leapt as he watched their fingers entwine. "The question remains..." She looked up again, her twinkling eyes inquisitive, once more. "How did you know to be here this particular hour, this particular day? Your coordinates were great for pointing out _where_ to go, don't get me wrong, but they didn't specify _when_. And I'll warn you..." She smiled cheekily. "I don't believe in extrasensory perception. So I expect a thorough scientific explanation..."

He winced, worried about being seen by the only person in the world whose respect he wanted.

She tilted her head, then set her jaw. He'd come to recognize that expression during the heist: she was mentally consolidating evidence and running her hypothesis through self checks. Her incisive expression turned decided. "You've waited here every day," she said slowly, as if she couldn't believe her own words, "for a year?"

He nodded, feeling shy. To his horror, her eyes widened. Would she find his monastic devotion depressing, pitiable, or disconcertingly odd? "369 days," he verified, then cleared his throat, noticing he sounded hoarse. "It took me two weeks to make my way here after escaping Madrid."

She shook her head, mouth agape. "How did you know I would come?"

"I didn't think you would."

Her jaw dropped further.

"I tried not to make assumptions about how you felt," he explained. "So I based my conjecture on what you'd said, what you'd done, during our last encounters in Toledo and at the hangar. I crossed those observations with the likelihood you'd kept the postcards—a likelihood that decreased by the day—and I calculated the probability that you'd come at around thirty percent." Feeling nervous, he pushed his glasses up his nose. "Though in the vast majority of those scenarios, you show up with a gun to my back as you usher in Interpol. So for _this_ scenario, the one that's transpiring..." He trailed off, tasting the bile of self-consciousness in his throat. "...if I've interpreted it correctly, which I dearly hope I have..." He gulped, forcing himself to continue. "...I placed the probability of _this_ scenario at four percent."

She put her hand over her mouth and let out a kind, beautiful laugh. Her eyes softened with what looked like empathy, and another warm emotion he couldn't put his finger on. He blinked rapidly—in shock—as he realized the look was adoration. "On my optimistic days," he elaborated, emboldened, "when a book passage inspired me to believe in true love, I bumped the probability up to nine percent."

She was full on giggling now. _Oh god, he loved making her laugh!_

"Nine percent," she repeated, her tone mock-serious.

"On my good days."

"On your good days. And every other day, four percent."

He nodded.  
  
"What horrific odds!" She burst warm-heartedly. "Especially for a man who strives to anticipate everything." She reached up with one hand and rubbed his cheek with her thumb. "I can't believe you sat here..."

"On that uncomfortable stool." He gestured behind him, glancing over his shoulder. For the first time since Raquel had appeared and stopped time, he noticed Jovelle, the bartender. The young man was at the other end of the counter, pretending to clean cocktail glasses while not-so-discreetly keeping a fascinated eye on his best customer ever and the woman he was with.

"So you sat on that stool for 369 days, not knowing how I felt, or whether I'd burned the postcards, or whether I'd come," she recounted with astonishment. "How were you not out of your mind with boredom?"

"I don't believe in boredom."

She pressed her lips together, apparently trying to repress a smirk. "Of course you don't."

"I had my books as company. I spent my childhood in a hospital bed and my adulthood as a hermit. I'm used to sitting and not moving and having no one talk to except for myself..."

"And Jovelle," she interjected in a whisper.

"And Jovelle," he corroborated in a low voice, then broke into a grin.

She nodded, thoughtfully. "Let me guess..." She knitted her eyebrows together in an exaggerated imitation of working a case. "You read nonfiction. Especially history. You enjoy alternate histories..." She paused, mulling. "If written with an attention to accuracy, you can sink into a good historical fiction." She closed her eyes for a second, as if coming up with a final entry. "And when you allow yourself to feel indulgent, you love a good mystery."

He felt himself grin like an idiot. He had no idea Raquel guessing his reading habits could be such a turn on—but it was. "Well done, detective." He relinked their hands without breaking eye contact. "But there is one new development. Three months ago I ran out of books in those categories from the expat bookshop, and I was missing you terribly..."

"That's a given."

"Yes, but it's an important detail in this development..."

"Carry on."

"...so I picked up a romance."

"A romance."

"Yes, a paperback romance." He pushed his glasses back up his nose. "You'll have to tell me if I blush, because I don't know if I'm one of those people who do, but my cheeks feel very warm right now."

"You don't seem to be a blusher, sweetie."

"Good to know, thank you. So yes, I started reading romance novels. Especially ones about star-crossed lovers. And then I couldn't stop. Especially since..."

"You were missing me."

"Beyond words, yes. I missed you so much that the world lost its color. And four days ago when I hit the one year mark of sitting on that stupid stool, all remaining hope left me and I felt disillusioned. I felt like I'd been lied to by the romance writers of the world. They'd given me false hope; I'd been a rube. I packed up my novels and gave them to Jovelle—he plans to learn English..." He waved to Jovelle, who slowly raised one hand in the air and waved back, apparently more confused than ever. "...I vowed to myself that I'd never pick up a romance again."  
  
"And yet, you kept sitting here; you didn't leave."  
  
He nodded. "For the last four days, I've been sitting here like a fool, without even a book, growing more and more convinced I'd never see you again, regretting that for once in my life I hadn't made a Plan C."

Her smile faded, eyes sober. "It's a good thing I showed up when I did." She rose up on her toes and pecked him on the cheek, then returned to her position before him. "You must have been incredibly lonely."

He opened his mouth to speak, then stopped, afraid to disclose too much.

"Wait, let me guess," she amended. "You don't believe in loneliness either."

"I always thought loneliness was for weak minds..." he confessed.

"You know what?" Her eyes twinkled. "You're lucky you're such a kind soul because otherwise you'd sound like a complete ass." He tried to evaluate her expression. Her lips were curved upward, her eyes entertained. If he had to guess, he'd say she appeared to be charmed. He smiled with self-deprecation, suddenly able to forgive his past ignorance, because Raquel seemed to like him, just the same.

"I thought loneliness was a term people used when they were uncomfortable being alone," he admitted. "I always said that as long as you were intellectually engaged—reading, writing, creating—you could never be lonely." He paused, ashamed of how wrong he'd been. "But every day this past year has been a lesson in my own stupidity. I didn't know what loneliness was because I'd never met you. I had never _wanted_ to be with anyone else more than I'd wanted to be alone..." Her pupils trembled. "...I'd never had the desire to understand someone so deeply, to be seen by them completely, to be tangled up emotionally, messily intertwined, growing together, changing one another..." He trailed off, wondering if he'd shared too much. Tears welled in her eyes. "I've been undeniably profoundly lonely, Raquel." He filled his lungs with air, forcing himself to continue. "I've longed, every day, for the company of your soul."

Cheeks glistening, she reached around him with both arms, turning her head to lay it flat against his chest. _Could she hear his heartbeat?_

He closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around her tightly—enjoying the solidity of her hug, hoping his enveloping hold felt just as comforting to her.

"I'm so sorry, Raquel," he said, keeping his eyes squeezed shut.

"For what?" she softly asked, her temple pressed against his ribs.

"I damaged your reputation, ruined your career." He shook his head at himself, remorseful. "In a matter of days, I dismantled what you'd worked for years to build. You earned your reputation; you earned your career. And I fed the horde, knowing full well the public was sexist, ready to tear you down. You didn't deserve that. No one does." He shuddered, feeling his shame in his bones. "I plan to repent. I'm committed to making it up to you. I'm not sure how, but I will. I owe you that." He braced himself for her response, taking comfort in the dark of his eyelids.

"Love isn't a transaction," she spoke quietly, her cheek still against his chest, the vibrations of her voice penetrating his heart. "It's not an accounting exercise with a ledger you're trying to balance every month. So if you feel like you owe me something: that's not love, that's guilt and shame and self-punishment, which, my dear, you seem to have in spades." He felt her nestle even more snuggly against him. "So please don't confuse _guilt_ with _love_. Love should feel freeing, not obligatory."

Without opening his eyes, he rested his chin atop her head. "That makes sense," he whispered, not wanting to interrupt. He wanted her voice to be the only one he ever heard for the rest of his life. He wanted to learn about love from her, with her, alongside her.

"Also," she continued, tone measured, "you hurt my career; you didn't hurt me." Her equanimity revealed her resilience and grit. "When I figured out who you really were, my heart broke and rebuilt and re-broke more times in 24 hours than I would've thought possible, but if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that when someone's actions are intended to injure me, it's how I treat myself that determines how deep the bruises go."

He felt awestruck—a feeling usually reserved for a starry night sky and the vastness of space. "You're the more incredible person I've ever met," he marveled, his chin bumping lightly against the top of her head.

She giggled. "A few minutes ago you outed yourself as a lifelong recluse, so I'm not sure that's much of a compliment."

He felt himself smile. "Fair enough." He sighed, holding her even closer. "I'm incredibly grateful for you, you know." He paused, second-guessing himself. "Is gratitude allowed?"

"Yes, gratitude is _allowed_." She chuckled faintly, perhaps at his compulsion to figure out the rules.

"In that case," he declared, "thank you."

"For what?"

"For not turning me in when you left the hangar."

"You should know," she responded carefully, not moving from her position against his chest. "They arrested me at Ángel's bedside, and I did, eventually, tell them your address. I waited as long as I could, until what felt like the last possible second, doing everything to buy time. Prieto was waving a custody document in my face, saying that Alberto—_the hero of the case_—had filed for full guardianship and that if I was found guilty of even a single charge against the state, custody would automatically go to him."  
  
Sergio gasped, struck with terror. _Had Raquel lost Paula?_ If she'd lost her daughter to that monster because of him, he'd never forgive himself. He'd plot a trip back to Spain to rescue Raquel's daughter. Yes, that was it. They would get her back. He rubbed Raquel's shoulders in what he hoped was a reassuring gesture, preparing to tell her his idea, hoping she already knew he'd do that for her—for them.

"Don't worry," she whispered, evidently sensing his fear. "Paula is safe; she's with me. She's here on the island."

_Paula was here. That meant..._

"She's with Mom at the yellow hotel by the boat dock. I paid the nice woman at the front desk to send her mother-in-law over to watch them so I could follow the coordinates the rest of the way here." 

_Paula and Mariví were here. That meant..._

"Is something the matter?" she asked sharply. _He couldn't find his words._ "Your body is tense and I can hear your heartbeat getting faster."

He tried to speak, but nothing came out. _Paula and Mariví were here. That meant..._ His mind felt stuck in a loop, unable to fully acknowledge the impact of what he'd learned.

Raquel pushed away from their embrace with fierce strength. He opened his eyes, devastated to see her frustrated scowl. "You _did_ say that you were willing to cross the ocean with a mother, a daughter, and a grandmother, did you not?" She was understandably angry. How could she know how he felt if he didn't open his mouth? "Did you forget that they're part of my life? That they're what it means to be with me?"

"Yes, yes! I mean, no!" he stammered, making a mess of it. "N-no, I didn't forget! And y-yes I said it, and yes I meant it, and I still do!" he stuttered, panicked.

"What then? What's your problem?" She jutted her chest forward, as if posturing for battle.

"I just hadn't dared to hope..." He lost his words again. "Paula and Mariví being on Palawan means..." He opened his mouth like a guppy fish, but nothing else came out.

Her shoulders dropped and her brow unfurrowed. She sighed, apparently relieved. "I'm not going back, Sergio, if that's what you're worried about." He nodded. Her fury was gone. She stepped forward and reached out to interlink their fingers again, lifting them up so their clasped hands were nestled between their bodies. "I'm here to stay."

His mouth dropped open as she said the words he'd been too cowardly to ask. He probably looked dumbstruck. Since his bedridden childhood, he'd been a lover of stories, but he'd always known where fantasy stopped and reality began. He was having trouble processing that everything he wanted was actually coming true.

"Are you okay?" she raised an eyebrow, her mouth turning upward in a smile.

"More than okay. Just overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with joy, gratitude, a little bit of fear—fear that I won't be worth it, that you'll regret upending your life, that you'll wake up tomorrow or the next day or next year and wonder why you came all this way, leaving your friends and homeland behind, all for my stupid face..."

"Nothing about you is stupid," she interrupted, her smile sympathetic. "Yes, this is a big move, a huge move. There's no turning back. But I'm ready. I've been ready. You wanna know the truth?" He nodded, not entirely sure what was coming. "I would've shown up here a long time ago if I'd only flipped over the damn postcards. It only took me a year to get here because I didn't know how to find you! I'd already decided _I was with you_."

"I don't deserve you," he marveled aloud.

"Well, that's good, because I don't belong to you. I'm not a prize to be won."

"Oh god, I didn't mean that." He pressed his palm to his forehead. "I'm so sorry. I'm so terrible at this. I'll get better at..." He didn't even know what he was trying to say. "...at..."

"Oh, please." She strained up on her toes and kissed his nose. "Stop worrying. What else are we going to do with our time besides get better at expressing ourselves to one another? I quit my job and last time I checked, you don't need one." She winked. "I'm pretty sure our relationship is our new career." She looked up at him, into him, her eyes glinting with humor and joy.

He trembled with the realization that who he was—annoyingly planful, obsessively strategic, inept at relationships—was maybe the very person Raquel loved. 

She grabbed him from behind the neck and pulled him down into another kiss. His mouth crashed into hers and this time, he knew what to do. His eyes fell closed and he felt propelled by the confidence that the desire was shared. He found her face with his hands and rubbed her jawline with his fingers. He kissed her boldly, sensually, extending his tongue to dance with hers. He was no longer afraid of keeping up, of humiliating himself before the love of his life—he could feel himself learning by the minute and he knew that she accepted him as is.


	3. Chapter 3

Raquel opened her eyes and pulled her lips away from Sergio's, not because she wanted to stop, but because she knew that standing in public, in front of Jovelle the bartender, there was only so far this reunion could go.

She watched Sergio open his eyes. He squinted behind his black-rimmed glasses, readjusting to the bright Palawan sun until his pupils found hers. Instantly, his expression turned worried, as if he couldn't bear to not be kissing her, even for a moment. Her heart surged. "Take me home," she whispered, removing her hands from the back of his neck, sliding them down his arms to grab his hands.

He stared at her attentively, but didn't move.

"Sergio," she prompted in a low voice. "I don't have the patience to comb through local security footage to figure out where you live."

He startled, as if she'd stirred him from a waking dream. He donned a bashful smile. "Yes, yes, let's go." He nodded rapidly, reaching into the breast pocket of his handsomely tailored cream jacket. "I'll just..." He pulled out a modest money clip, clasped around colorful Philippine pesos. He held it up, demonstrating that he meant to pay so they could leave. He froze, money in hand, apparently hesitant to let go of her with his other, his fingers lingering against hers, perhaps afraid that if they stopped touching, she'd disappear and he'd never see her again. She tried to reassure him with a smile, then tilted her head in the direction of the bartender, who was openly staring at them.

Sergio obliged and let go of her hand. He gawkily stepped over to the bamboo bar. "Thank you, Jovelle." He pushed two green and purple bills across the counter, then lifted his hat off the bar and placed it on his head, precisely.

Jovelle continued gaping, eyes shifting between her and Sergio. The young man absently picked up the money without looking down and slipped it into his change belt. "Is this your girlfriend?" he asked Sergio intently, in accented Spanish.

"Yes," Sergio responded with a croak; he glanced over his shoulder at her, as if wanting to make sure she agreed.

But she had a very different concern. "He speaks Spanish?" she validated, trying to swallow her fear that the last ten minutes of their mumblings may have been overheard. In the 13 grueling days since she'd discreetly left Spain with her mom and Paula, telling them she was taking them on a once-in-a-lifetime trip, she'd functioned as her own intelligence and counterintelligence detail, crossing borders at rural checkpoints without digital records, choosing varied and unconventional forms of transportation. The most recent leg was a chartered Malaysian boat from a quiet port on Borneo. She was confident the last electronic scan of their passports was at the border of the Czech Republic and Poland, but she wasn't yet sure how secure this island oasis of Sergio's was.

"A little," Jovelle responded to her directly, holding his thumb and index finger an inch apart.

"I've been teaching him basic greetings and pleasantries," Sergio elaborated. Jovelle tilted his head, unsure what Sergio had said. Relief washed over her as she realized that statement had been too complex for their local listener to understand. She should've known Sergio wouldn't expose them to danger.

"Nice to meet you," Jovelle enunciated carefully, seemingly undeterred, sticking out his hand. She stepped forward and reached across the bar to shake it. Either the young man was enthusiastic to practice his Spanish, or he was curious to learn more about his loyal customer's visitor. "I am Jovelle. What is your name?"

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sergio look aghast, his eyes widening with panic.

"My name is Lisbon," she replied with a final firm grip of Jovelle's hand before returning her arm to her side. "Nice to meet you too, Jovelle." The young man smiled with pride, apparently pleased to have successfully exchanged names. "We need to go now," she explained simply, as politely as she could muster, having zero interest in extending this conversation. She placed her hand on Sergio's lower back and turned to look up at him. He appeared stunned—probably recovering from the shock that she'd had a pseudonym at the tip of her tongue. She mock coughed, hoping to shake him from his daze.

"Yes, yes, we should go," he repeated, nodding to Jovelle, then pivoting quickly and heading off toward the street, as if he'd just remembered he'd left the stove on. She kept pace alongside him, muffling a laugh. She remembered, a year ago, ripping off her headset in frustration and telling Suárez that the Professor was a rock star. It was true: Sergio had zen-like sangfroid and resilient mettle in high stakes situations; yet in everyday life, when he wasn't shielded by his strategies, he could be endearingly awkward. During the past year, one of her stunning realizations was that she adored every aspect of who he was—from self-possessed to bumbling. She wanted to get to know all of him. She already _loved_ all of him.

At the street, he turned right, the opposite direction from which she'd come. She extended her hand toward his; he blinked down at it, then smiled shyly and reached back. They linked fingers and she felt his right palm settle snuggly against her left. She slowed her gait to a stroll; he adjusted his speed to match. She sighed and heard him do the same. "Home is this way," he announced, sounding significantly calmer now. "Just a five minute walk." He smiled down at her, his enchanting eyes glinting with joy. She felt herself grin back, then turned her attention to the varied shops and sea of people they passed.

A wave of self-satisfaction flowed through her. She pressed her lips together to stop herself from seeming too smug! Against all odds, she and Sergio were safely in the Philippines together, hand in hand, sauntering down a bustling street, sun welcoming her from above, the sound of ocean waves and shoreside birds in the background. A girl Paula's age in a flower-print dress and flip-flops walked purposefully their way from the opposite direction; she held a rope attached to the nose ring of a horned water buffalo. Raquel imagined giving Paula that kind of responsibility; her heart swelled, picturing what a confident young woman she'd become. This drastic life change could be good for them all.

_Beep beep. _She glanced over her shoulder. A man riding a blue metal bicycle with a shade roof and empty sidecar was pedaling quickly towards them. _Beep beep, _he squeezed his toy-like horn a second time. She and Sergio stepped back, out of his path, creating space for him to pass. Across the street, she noticed a small bookshop nestled beside an unlabeled storefront that was chock full of utilitarian supplies. Stacks of garish plastic tubs in assorted sizes lined the roadside; stiff brooms made from long thin sticks bound into tight bundles hung off the red awning, swaying in the breeze. To the other side of the little bookshop was a covered street cart with a crudely painted fish on its hanging sign—smoke rose off of the covered cookware; the elderly seller expertly kept it out of her face with a woven fan made of dried palm fronds.

"That's my local bookshop," Sergio confirmed cheerfully, apparently noticing where her eyes had landed. The sign on the window boasted _English - Japanese - Spanish - German_. "We can go in sometime, if you'd like," he offered as they resumed walking. "I apologize in advance though..." She glanced up at him, unsure what he could possibly be sorry about. "The family who works there may stare just as much as Jovelle. They're always badgering me about wanting to introduce me to one of their cousins. I think they find it frustrating that for a year they haven't been able to get me to accept their offers of a date, no matter what they try." He smiled good-naturedly. "I'm sure we'll fuel the gossip mill when we wander in holding hands."

"I look forward to their shocked expressions." She watched him out of the corner of her eye as they strolled. "You know, we're gonna have to do something about that word..." She could tell from his furrowed brow he had no idea what she was referring to. "Calling me your _girlfriend_," she clarified.

"Y-you don't agree?"

"Do you like the sound of being my _boyfriend_?"

"If I'm being honest?"

"Please," she assured. "Always be." She squeezed his hand.

"Then, yes," he declared with certitude. "Yes, I do like the sound of being your boyfriend."

She felt her heart melt at his earnestness—his face was riddled with concern. "Oh, sweetheart! Don't worry." She reached over with her right hand and stroked his upper arm for emphasis. "I agree that we're together. I just mean those terms—_girl_friend, _boy_friend—seem so juvenile. It makes it sound like we're teenagers or casually dating." She smirked at just how non-casual their relationship has been: it had already included professions of love at gunpoint, life-altering gestures of trust, and a billion-dollar _fuck you_ to the power structure of Spain that had rallied the disenfranchised and rattled the European elite. "Looking back on your past relationships," she continued, turning her neck to peer up at him, "don't you think the moment you went from saying _girlfriend_ to _partner_ was the moment those relationships became serious?"

"This is the market!" he suddenly exclaimed, gesturing to their right at a large open-sided tent that stretched the size of a modest block. "You should see it." Without letting go of her hand, he ducked under the edge of the canvas, which was hung high enough that she and the locals could walk right under it. Inside, the tent ceiling was conveniently raised, with a meter to spare above Sergio's head. Her eyes adjusted to the low natural light, and she noticed that he was the tallest person among the two hundred inside. She found it funny that in their desire to get away from it all, he'd picked a nation where he stuck out like a sore thumb.

From her observation point, holding hands with Sergio at the market's edge, she could see that rows of plastic folding tables formed half a dozen walkways for buyers to step through. The forty or so sellers were engaged in conversation with one another or with customers, sitting on overturned buckets, snacking on one another's wares or cooling themselves with handheld electric fans. One older woman was using a neon pink fly swatter to keep insects away from her unrefrigerated display of plump fish, the morning's catch looking less fresh than Raquel would've wanted.

"You pick which way we go," Sergio encouraged. She glanced up and found his eyes. They had a glossy sheen that made him seem both delighted and overwhelmed to be sharing this moment with her. She nodded, then surveyed her options. She adjusted her hand so she could grip his even tighter, then headed toward a table on the far left that featured a pile of angular, translucent-yellow fruit.

"Ah, starfruit," he identified as they got closer. The teenaged girl manning the stall talked rapidly at them and held up two—then three—starfruit at a time. Raquel wondered if she was hearing English words mixed in, but she knew her own English wasn't very good.

"She said it's two for twenty pesos," Sergio translated with an amused smile. "Then she insisted we could have three for twenty."

"Was she speaking English?" Raquel asked, nodding politely at the starfruit teen before turning her gaze up the aisle.

"She inserted English words here and there," he corroborated offhand. "Do you like fruit?" he asked, perhaps noticing she'd picked the fruitiest row to amble down.

She nodded, staring at a football-sized oval covered in hard green bumps. A quarter of the large fruit had been strategically cut into, exposing dozens of yellow segments of soft flesh inside. It looked like an alien egg, hatching giant yellow larva. She tried to dismiss that thought, focusing on the fact that it was probably tasty.

"Try," insisted the thin, elderly seller who was missing his upper row of teeth. In one hand, he held a giant cleaver that had evidently made its way through the fruit's tough shell. In his other hand, he held out a small piece of the tempting yellow flesh.

"Go for it," Sergio whispered supportively as they passed. "It's jackfruit. Sweet but substantial."

She accepted the slice from the vendor and said _thank you_, first in English, then in Spanish, unsure which to use, but hoping she'd communicated effectively.

Sergio said something friendly over his shoulder. She glanced back. The man nodded and waved his machete pleasantly in return.

"What did you say?" she asked, fascinated that Sergio had command of the local language.

"I said that if you like it, we'll come back with the rest of the family and buy a whole one."

Her heart fluttered. Although he'd likely just said it to the vendor for the sake of simplicity, she noticed how much she enjoyed hearing him refer to her mom and Paula as _the rest of the family._ She put the piece of jackfruit in her mouth and closed her eyes for a second as she tasted it on her tongue. It _was_ sweet, yet substantial. She chuckled at the accuracy of Sergio's description. "I like it," she reported, glancing up to meet his contented gaze, then turning her eyes back to the stalls, swinging their clasped hands between them, feeling lighter than air.

"We'll bring Paula here and see if she likes it too," he planned aloud and pressed her hand.

She'd never felt so smitten, even as a teenager with her first crush. "So you've learned Tagalog?"

"The local dialect, actually. The Philippines has over a thousand islands and just as many dialects," he shared. "Here in the Visayas, which is this middle section of islands where we are now—between the big island of Luzon up north, and the Islamic islands of Mindanao down south—here, people tend to speak a regional variation of Visayan with one another. It sounds much more beautiful to my ears than Tagalog—it's quite sing-song really." She was thankful Sergio's personality wasn't defined by his moniker. She hated lecturey, pedantic people, who behaved as if they _knew_ they were smarter than everyone else. She was pretty sure Sergio was more intelligent than anyone she'd ever been close to, but when they talked, he didn't act condescending. He spoke with passion, genuine interest, soulfulness even—like he truly wanted to communicate. "Tagalog was imposed as the national language during colonial rule. That's why it has elements of Spanish mixed in, but it sounds too obviously like the colonizer's language to me."

She laughed. "You do realize you're Spanish. Our ancestors _were_ the colonizers." She swerved them closer to a table of bananas. Some were tiny and yellow; some were huge and brown. Only a handful resembled the type she'd grown up with.

"I do realize that..." He trailed off, sounding reflective as they meandered. "But I don't relate to the colonial mindset, I never have. I'm pretty sure if I'd been a young Spanish boy, conscripted into service to cook and clean aboard a conquistador's vessel, upon landing in the Philippines, while my countrymen were pillaging and plundering and imposing their worldview on the people and land, at the first chance I got, I would've jumped ship, literally, and run off with the locals."

"Mmm-hmm, I can see that," she mused, easily imagining a 1500s incarnation of Sergio. There was something poetically anachronistic about the man.

"I'd probably have joined whatever resistance movement the locals had going, if they'd have me," he continued his improvisational historical fiction. "I'd try to do my part at keeping my people at bay, knowing how consuming and self-interested they can be." It occurred to her that she could see herself enjoying his voice for years to come. She pictured sitting on the beach with the sun going down, their hands clasped in the sand, listening to his vivid stories, both real and fantastic, feeling captivated and transported at the same time.

She sighed aloud, feeling blissed out of her mind.

"Are you okay?" he inquired with a knowing smile, evidently aware that her sigh was a happy one.

"Is it just me or do bananas look different here?" She gestured at the nearest table of adorable baby-sized bunches.

"There are only one or two varieties that transport well overseas," he revealed. "Here, there are actually hundreds of types."  
  
"Hundreds?"  
  
"There are also hundreds of mango varieties. Do you like mangoes?" he asked, perhaps noticing that her eyes were lingering a bit longer on the tables piled high with them.

"I love mangoes," she divulged, feeling slightly hungry as she said it.

"That's good to know," he remarked. He appeared to be using his tall vantage point to scan the entire tent. "I'm going to find you the best variety."

Her eyes drifted to the upcoming table of round flowery fruit. Green tipped leaves protruded from fuchsia skin. The family selling them had sliced open a few to display the translucent white meat with black specs. She squinted at the odd fruit as they passed. "Are you sure you wouldn't have been a missionary?" she asked.

"Excuse me?" He nearly tripped.

"Back in the 1500s. If you'd been around in colonial times."

"Raquel," he began, tone serious, "I feel you and I know one another in the most important ways, but in some ways, it occurs to me that we don't know one another at all." He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "I hate to disappoint you, but I'm not religious."

"That doesn't disappoint me..." she countered, noticing they were at the end of the aisle. She pulled him toward the quiet edge of the tent and spun to face him. "...nor does it surprise me." She slipped her arms around his waist, finding that she wanted to hold him whenever they weren't walking. She looked up into his slightly wary eyes. "I just meant that you have a pious streak. It's admirable; I respect it. You strike me as someone who could've taken a vow of silence, of non violence..." She stopped herself from saying _celibacy_ because she didn't want him to feel self-conscious when they were making love. "My point is that very few people can actually keep difficult vows, and you're one of them. Your conviction, your will—it's palpable." He nodded slowly, apparently processing her premise. "Plus, you can be a tad evangelical about what you believe..." she teased him lightly, smiling in a way that she hoped would be contagious.

"I see your point," he conceded after a pause. "And you're right. I can envision myself crossing an ocean, keeping vows, patiently holding vigil, day after day..." He returned her smile, his eyes dancing with a playfulness he usually kept hidden. "All for something—or _someone_—I believe in."

Her cheeks grew warm. She wasn't fishing for a compliment or prompting him to talk about his devotion to her—she really wasn't!

He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her gently against him—her breath hitched at his sudden confidence. "Is it okay that it's you I worship?" he incanted.

Heat erupted between her legs, speeding along her labia. Her eyelids fell shut. Thankfully, she felt his lips press against hers. His mouth was so tender, so expressive. She felt him pull away_—but she wanted more!_ "We'll be home soon," he whispered huskily, his beard caressing her ear. Her vulva pulsed with desire.

She forced herself to open her eyelids and found herself staring into Sergio's soft brown eyes and relaxed smile. Her cunt flooded; she gasped at the sensation.

He broke into a gorgeous grin that she found devastatingly sexy—probably because he wasn't _trying_ to be. She swallowed uncomfortably, throat ironically dry. She couldn't bear to waste time grabbing water from her backpack. "Find those mangoes," she directed, nodding once. "And let's go."

He nodded back, decisively. "Let's go." He grasped her hand and pointed toward the middle aisle. "They're over there." They set off, conspicuously faster paced than before.

They passed a table staffed by two elderly women, so facially similar they had to be siblings. The sisters sat silently on plastic green children's chairs, clearly not bothering to talk to foreigners, apparently confident their rightful buyers would come to them. As she and Sergio quickly skirted the stall, Raquel glanced in their beige sieves, filled with thousands of round grey legumes sporting tiny white tails.

They were approaching the busiest table she'd yet seen. She recognized the distinctive volume and tenor of bartering, even though she couldn't understand the language. As they scooted behind the backs of those waiting for their turn, she caught a glimpse of the busy mother, father, and nonbinary child who were thrusting metal scoops into bushels of rice, filling customer-provided sacks as each buyer tried their best to haggle, then using a pair of aluminum scales to weigh the bags, tie off the tops, and pass the rice to the waiting customer in exchange for the agreed-upon pesos. She admired the smooth speed of their actions, and she prayed that she and Sergio could just as rapidly weave their way to his house.

"Here they are," he announced gleefully, as they made it beyond the rice-buying crowd. She followed him to a modest table with a spread of particularly small mangoes. He surveyed the assortment, carefully picked up two—which to her looked indistinguishable from the rest—and put them in the bag the small boy behind the counter handed him. "The delicate skin makes it messy to get into and impossible to prevent from bruising unless you're attentive," Sergio explained. "The large pit is fun to suck on, though that means there's a lot of pit for very little flesh..."

"It doesn't sound you're describing something _good_," she interrupted, feeling impish. "Why not go for a type that's a little less fraught?"

"For the taste, Raquel!" he insisted. "It's the best—I'll show you." He pumped her hand and steadied his gaze. "I promise it's worth it."

She felt herself smile, entertained by his enthusiasm. As he spoke to the boy and paid for the mangoes, her eyes drifted, landing on a giant, spiny brown fruit a few stalls away. It sat by itself on a table, not needing any accompaniment. She let go of Sergio's hand and walked towards it, entranced. Locals were coming up and buying little plastic baggies of its squishy yellow contents. The woman who ran the stall was deftly slicing chunks of flesh out of the fruit's center based on each customer's order, as if carving a hot roast beef. She caught the woman's eye—the seller grinned, understanding, then balanced a small piece of fruit on the edge of her knife, holding it out for Raquel to take.

"Oh no, no, no..." Sergio called from behind, sounding like he was running her way. He grabbed her by the waist with his free arm, pulling her away from the stall while the woman laughed aloud. "Let's not have you try durian on your first day."

"Why not?" Raquel asked as they walked passed, annoyed at his intervention, but wrapping her arm around his waist, too. She glanced over her shoulder. The woman was chuckling with satisfaction as she popped the abandoned piece of fruit into her mouth—then, still chewing, the woman called something out to her and Sergio. Without turning or pausing their stride, Sergio raised his bag of mangoes in the air as an acknowledgment of whatever had been said. Raquel appreciated they were making a beeline for home, but she was pissed off at his overreaction to her trying a stupid piece of fruit.

"What was that all about?" she demanded as they headed up the row of vendors, toward the side of the tent where they'd entered.

"She gets a thrill out of shocking newbies."  
  
"What do you mean?"

"You've never heard of durian?" he checked, glancing at her. She shrugged. "It's infamous. Durian has shut down airport security, caused building supers to think they have a sewer leak..." She furrowed her forehead, trying to make sense of what he was saying. "The vendor summed it up as we walked away: _d__urian smells like hell, but tastes like heaven_."

"How can that be?" She felt herself cooling off, not angry anymore.

"You'll see. We'll introduce you to it someday..."

"...just not on my first day."

"Exactly. I want you to be happy here. I don't want anything to make you regret your decision, especially not durian." He smiled at her, sparkling eyes sincere. "So let's wait a month. Then we'll buy some, hold our noses, and try it. You'll experience the paradox firsthand."

She winced at how she'd been momentarily furious with him. _Thank god she hadn't expressed it!_ Even though he hadn't seemed to notice, she felt embarrassed for doubting his intentions. She felt a sharp pain in her temple as she realized that overprotectiveness reminded her of Alberto—no wonder she was ready to fight so quickly! She shook her head rapidly, trying to clear the sensation of her ex-husband invading her space—and invading her current relationship.

"Are you okay?" Sergio looked down at her. He loosened his grip on her midriff, perhaps sensing she was uncomfortable.

"I'm fine," she assured herself as much as him, then momentarily leaned the side of her head against his shoulder, grounding herself in the feeling of his body. "Have you ever gone fishing here?" she asked, her eyes landing on the table near the exit—the one with the plump fish that looked like they'd been out too long. She was desperate to focus on her real surroundings, not her old fears.

"No, I can't say that I have."

"How amazing would that be? To catch our own fish for dinner?"

"I'm confident it's harder than it looks," he remarked, smiling kindly at the fish vendor with her pink fly swatter as they passed.

"You like to research things," she reasoned, as Sergio ducked under the edge of the tent and they both reemerged in the sun. She nudged him as they resumed their stroll. "You can read about it."

"Moby Dick doesn't make it sound very appealing," he pointed out.

"I guess the mint _was_ your white whale," she joked.

"Hmmm..." he hummed, his arm falling away from her waist. Reluctantly, she extracted her arm from around his, horrified at her own stupidity. Three of his crew had died in the mint. Her metaphor wasn't witty; it was a terrible reminder. Her dear, sweet, guilt-ridden Sergio probably beat himself up every day for the deaths of those people. She wondered how close he'd been to those who'd died.

"I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have said that." She reached out with her fingers, desperately hoping he'd reach back. He did—but without making eye contact. She slipped her palm against his and squeezed.

"Don't apologize," he stated stiffly, far away and formal. "You didn't say anything inaccurate." She'd never heard him so coldly distant. Her heart sank. Even as the Professor, he'd been present with her. She gazed at the side of his face as they made their way up the busy street, the shops and people a blurry backdrop, her precious Sergio her sole focus. He looked forlorn, even despairing. He wouldn't return her gaze. She felt his soul drifting away from her by the second. She kept her eyes glued to his profile, refusing to let him go, refusing to let him out of her sight. Finally, he turned to face her. His watery quivering eyes betrayed a profound grief. She locked her pupils onto his—determined to reach him. Her heart constricted with pain as she felt a small amount of his sorrow; she ached with the desire to hold him, rock him, rescue him from the abyss...

He blinked his beautiful, welling eyes. Tears escaped and rolled down his cheeks. She felt a tear slip down her cheek, too.

He smiled with bashful gratitude, then genuine warmth. "Maybe we can hire a mentor," he announced, sounding hopeful. She stared at him, not following his train of thought. "To learn to fish..." he expounded. Maybe he felt happiest—_and safest_—when making future plans. He ended their eye contact as they maneuvered around an East Asian family that had stopped in the middle of pedestrian traffic to consult their laminated map. "...since you seem so heart-set on it."

She laughed lightly, releasing the tension from her earlier faux pas. "A fishing mentor sounds perfect," she affirmed, eager to divert them from the hallway of demons she'd accidentally sent them down. "We can get a boat. One with a kitchen! So we can cook what we catch, straight out of the ocean."

"A boat," he repeated."I like the sound of that..." He nodded. "But first, we need to get a house."

"We do?"

"The current place was never meant to be permanent..." He trailed off. "It was just close to the coordinates. Now that you're here...I thought we could...if you want to, I mean..."

"What?" she encouraged gently.

"...go look for a house together..." He cleared his throat. "...a house for all of us."

She felt herself grin so wide her face hurt. "Nothing would make me happier," she responded sincerely, then turned and pressed her face against his shoulder, kissing his arm through his suit, not caring how ridiculous she looked nuzzling him as they walked. His tense shoulders relaxed, and even from his profile she could tell he'd broken into an equally broad grin. "Besides," she added, lowering her voice, "aren't there too many foreigners here for it to be safe?"

"Your assessment is correct, Inspector." He nodded his head. "We need to house hunt on one of the quiet tips of the island. We'll find a secluded stretch of beach."

"It's settled then," she concluded. She pumped his hand; he pumped it back. "We'll get a house. Then a boat."

"There's one more step..." He raised his finger in the air showily, maintaining hold of the bag of mangoes. "Does Paula know how to swim? It's not fully safe to be on a boat," he cautioned, "unless one knows how."

"Actually, she doesn't," Raquel admitted, dizzily swooning at the fact that he was looking out for her little girl. "She's been wanting to learn. Honestly, she's too old to not be a swimmer. Alberto was going to teach her before the divorce, before the restraining order..." her voice faded. She felt Sergio rubbing the back of her hand with his thumb, assuring her that she didn't need to explain. She smiled at his attentiveness. "Why?" she asked knowingly. "Are you volunteering to teach her?"

"I was hoping she could teach me."

She burst into laughter, drawing attention from a nearby patio of restaurant-goers. Stifling her amusement, she gaped up at him. "You don't know how to swim?"

"I don't," he confirmed, his dimples showing.

"How is that possible? You live on a beach..."

His hand tensed against hers. "I was too sick to learn as a child."

She cringed at her insensitivity. "Oh Sergio, I'm so sorry."

"No, no! Please don't feel bad. I wasn't looking for sympathy. I just wanted you to know more about me."

"Did you want to swim as a kid?"

"As a kid, I wanted a lot of things, but there were higher priorities than swimming." His chest rose and fell. "But now, being by the ocean, hearing the waves every morning, every night, it feels like the sea is taunting me, asking me why I'm too afraid to put more than my toes in!" He glanced at her with a timid smile and honest eyes, before returning his gaze to the street to navigate them past a crowded series of shopfronts. She marveled at how much she loved him; she silently vowed to always be careful with the vulnerable facets of his soul.

"That settles it," she declared. "I'm teaching you both. We'll have swim class."

He leaned towards her slightly without taking his eyes off the road, as if he had valuable information to discreetly share. "A child learning to swim is endearing and pulls on one's heartstrings, but I'm confident a grown man flailing in the water is the least amorous sight ever..." She giggled as he continued. "What if I learn to swim but it costs us our love life?"

"Sergio," she whispered back. "Nothing will stir more passion in me than someone being sweet to my child. By flailing in front of her, you're going to make her less self-conscious about being eight and not knowing how to swim."

"In that case, I look forward to embarrassing myself." His eyes twinkled.

She wanted to jump him, right then and there. "How much farther to your place?"

"This is our turn." He gestured to the right at an empty, unpaved alleyway between a concrete building and a cinderblock wall.

They stepped off the main road and it instantly got quieter; the bustling street sounds were deflected by the grey walls on either side. The cool, shadow-covered alley was barely wide enough for them to walk down without unlinking hands. A skilled moped driver might be able to scoot through it carefully, but she wouldn't want to try. To her right, she noticed the cinderblock wall was topped with a row of curled barbed wire. Beyond the wall, she could just make out the thatched roofs of a dozen rustic huts, spaced evenly apart. A volleyball arced back and forth; she heard wrists slamming against it, punctuated by English cheers and jeers, in British or Australian accents.

To her left, the plain concrete building stretched the entire length of the alley. It contained no windows, and six empty doorways with no doors. One doorway was covered with a patterned sheet that had been nailed directly into the concrete. A second doorway was covered with what looked like a tattered plastic tablecloth. The rest of the entrances were dark and open; privacy was apparently a luxury.

A pair of chickens clucked out of their way and weaved back and forth up the alley like drunk drivers, hurriedly keeping one stride ahead of them. She stared as the hens confidently wandered straight into an open doorway on their left. As they passed it, Raquel squinted inside and saw a pantsless toddler sitting on the bare dirt floor, using his finger to draw in the dirt as the chickens nonchalantly pecked the ground around him.

A woman squatted on the threshold of the next doorway, washing clothes in a bright green plastic tub, letting the soapy water run directly onto the street. The foamy suds flowed along the edge of the concrete building, etching a makeshift gutter in the dirt, giving Raquel's eyes something to fixate on. She didn't want the woman who was washing laundry to feel that her home, her neighbors, her neighborhood, were on display, being goggled at by a carefree visitor from the developed world. Although—Raquel gulped, swallowing the honest truth—that's exactly who she was. As challenging and dramatic as her life had been, she hadn't grown up hungry. She'd worked hard, but it had earned her a house with a yard, and the ability to feed and clothe Paula. If she'd been born on Palawan, and had worked just as hard, what would she have to show for it? A concrete tenement? An overworked back?

She kept her eyes on the soapy stream as it traced a windy channel up the side of the alley. She wondered if Sergio had a plan—a way to infuse a meaningful amount of money into the local economy while remaining safely inconspicuous. Realistically, she knew money was only part of the need. How could infrastructure be built, along with middle class jobs and the potential for advancement? What was the path to raising a community's standard of living so that basic needs were met but essential values weren't compromised? She imagined her new neighbors wouldn't take kindly to her privileged assumptions about poverty, materialism, and happiness—but she wondered all the same. She decided she'd prompt Sergio later to see what he thought. She sighed as it hit her that there was no one whose inner conscience and moral compass she'd rather be beside as they grappled with the complexity and injustice of the world. He pressed her hand, as if he could hear her thoughts, even though they hadn't spoken since they'd turned off the main road.

They reached the end of the alley and emerged onto a wide paved street, the sound of the ocean more audible than before. "It's just up here," Sergio said as they turned left onto the asphalt road and warm rays reheated her skin, the return to sunlight jarring but welcome. As they walked, she realized that everything to their right was oceanfront property, yet she couldn't see the beach. Each residence had cordoned off access to the water, so the whole length of the road, as far as she could see, was a continuous chain of back to back walls, fences, and locked gates. Stately palm trees, banana trees, and coconut trees rose above the mismatched series of compound enclosures, hinting at what life was like on the shaded other side. In some ways, the trees defied property ownership, blissfully unaware their roots had been bought, stretching freely toward the sky for all to see. In other ways, the thick groves accentuated the privacy of each residence, trunks and fronds obscuring sight lines, preventing passersby—like them—from catching a full view of whatever bungalow or casita graced its grounds.

A skinny, ragged dog with patchy grey and black fur appeared out of nowhere and began keeping pace alongside them, several feet away. He loped in time with their stride like a proud escort who kept a professional distance, his pert tail like a parade pennant, signaling their presence. "Do you know this fellow?" she asked, raising her eyebrows toward their four-legged companion.

"He's a stalwart member of the community. He was here before I arrived; he'll be here after we go."

"I thought maybe he was your security team."

Sergio looked down at her with a soft smile. His eyes became serious. "Speaking of which, we should confirm our emergency plans."

She nodded, feeling herself grow somber.

"If the island ever becomes unsafe and we're on the run, or if one of us gets caught..."

She winced, her chest constricting.

"...I'm sorry, I don't like to think about it either..."

"No, no, I'm glad you're planning. Keep going."

"...if one of us is ever missing in action, the other will leave Palawan and take Mariví and Paula to hide out on Mindanao..."

"The Islamic part of the Philippines, down south?" she confirmed, recalling what he'd said earlier when describing the Philippine archipelago.

He nodded. "Our meeting spot is the Taluksangay Mosque in the city of Zamboanga. We'll find one another in the north minaret, exactly one hour after _maghrib salat_—evening prayer."

"If we're ever separated, we'll reunite in Zamboanga, Mindanao," she repeated, committing the details to memory. "In the north minaret of the Taluksangay Mosque. One hour after evening prayer." She glanced up and caught his pained eyes with hers. "It's smart to have a backup plan and you're the master of contingencies, but don't worry dear," she soothed, "we aren't going to need it."

He smiled, wanly, then nodded agreeably, obviously wanting to believe her, but too realistic to fully subscribe to the dream.

Their canine companion suddenly disappeared through the bars of a wrought iron fence to their right, his stride never pausing, his confidence enviable, his sense of purpose laser clear.

"Is that his home?"

"The whole street is his home," Sergio corrected, then looked back over his shoulder, evidently checking to see if they were being followed, visibly relieved they were still alone on this residential street.

"By the way," she ventured, "I don't want you to worry I was tracked here. I gave zero indication we were leaving Madrid. I told Mom and Paula we were going to see the world, then an hour later we were on our way, before either of them could say anything to anyone." She felt a stab of guilt for uprooting her mom and Paula, for denying them the chance to say goodbye to family and friends, and most of all for not telling them the truth: that if she found Sergio, they wouldn't be going back. This wasn't a once-in-a-lifetime trip; this was a new way of life. "They say they're having a great time..." She tried to comfort her guilty conscience.

"I bet they are."

"...though they don't yet know this isn't just another pitstop, it's our new home." She looked up into Sergio's eyes, realizing she was seeking solace, absolution, hoping she'd made the right decision for her mother and daughter, not just for her.

He returned her gaze. His deep brown eyes seemed to recognize the gravity of her decision, but he wasn't one to sugarcoat the truth with comforting platitudes. Instead, his sober, supportive expression told her he would be there for her, with her, as she tried to do right by Paula and her mom.

She felt the corners of her mouth turn upward slightly. He mirrored her faint smile, his eyes respectfully solemn. She sighed with gratitude, appreciating his presence, his unflinching honesty, and his uncanny ability to suspend his self-interest. She looked ahead at the road again, and he did the same.

"We've been on the road for 13 days," she reflected. "I've shuttled us across country lines at non-networked checkpoints, avoiding border control entirely whenever possible. On my kitchen table is a note to my sister, who by now has checked up on Mom, I'm sure, wondering why she's not returning her calls. The note says I've taken Mom and Paula on an extended vacation, so that Mom can enjoy herself before her memory is completely gone. And that's it. No identifying details. Nothing."

"No wonder you're in a hurry to get to the house. After caring for your mom and Paula on the road for 13 days, you must need a nap."

She laughed. "They don't expect me till sunset, so a nap isn't out of the question, but there are more pressing items on the agenda that require attention first." She rubbed the back of his hand with her thumb and glanced sideways at him, so she could enjoy his reaction. His Adam's apple moved unmistakably as he swallowed. "If you were a blusher," she confided in a whisper, "I'm pretty sure you'd be red right now."

He grinned so broadly, his dimples reemerged. "This is us." He stopped in his tracks, beside a small crooked gate, paint chipped from years of weathering, a healthy vine wrapped so tightly around the bars it appeared to be more vegetation than iron. He let go of her hand to reach into the interior pocket of his jacket and retrieve a keychain with two brass keys. As he fit one into the rusty padlock, she noted that if the gate was any indication, this was one of the least pretentious residences they'd passed. The thought made her smile. She didn't think Sergio would be living lavishly—in order to play it safe and maintain a low profile—but she also imagined he didn't have ostentatious taste. It was assuring to see his grounded sensibilities confirmed.

The gate hinges squealed as he pushed open one of the two sides. "After you." She stepped through and heard him swing shut the gate behind her. At last, she could see the ocean. The gentle midday waves lapped rhythmically against the shore. A continuous blanket of tan-colored sand stretched from the water's edge up the open beach, under the foundation of a diminutive teak house on tall stilts, all the way up to the shaded earth where she now stood under a grove of majestic palms.

She felt Sergio retake her hand. They began walking the twenty meters toward the modest home, the sound of the sea getting louder with every step, the privacy of the trees just as welcome as the shelter they provided from the sun. She noticed a moped was tucked under the raised house. The stilts provided a convenient storage area, or a place for kids to play.

"Typhoons are a real concern here," Sergio explained quietly, perhaps seeing her survey the stilts, but not wanting to talk so loud as to break the spell of arriving at one's new home for the first time. Even though this was only going to be a temporary abode until they secured a bigger place away from the city, if she was being honest, she was delighted to find it so charming.

"Much nicer than 33 Alcantara," she said in a low voice; she saw him chuckle silently in response.

As they neared the base of the narrow teak steps with its intricately carved handrails, he let go of her hand to hop in front of her, then quickly jogged up the stairs. She felt her blood pump as she stared at his tight ass in his finely tailored trousers. He really was agile, strong, and in shape, despite his self-professed sedentary existence. _A ninja in glasses_, indeed. 

"Is something wrong?" Sergio asked from the top of the stairs, wondering why she hadn't followed him up.

"Just admiring the view," she confessed with a wink.

"I know, it's quite stunning the way the trees frame the sea," he replied earnestly. Apparently, being ogled at was so far out of his perception of himself, he didn't realize what she meant. His innocence about his own attractiveness only made him sexier to her. He stood back and pushed open the door with his broad hand as she sped to the top of the stairs. She crossed the threshold, hearing him step through behind her and shut the door. "Welcome home." A slight vocal tremor betrayed his nervousness.

Directly across from where she stood was a wall-length bank of glassless windows. Bamboo-slat shades were rolled into horizontal bundles and tucked at the top of each frame. The ocean breeze blew freely through the empty windows, filling the large room with fresh cooling air. A kingsized bed with crisp sheets and no blankets was centered beneath the windows, the view of the ocean where a headboard would be.

To her right was a spotless kitchen that occupied a third of the open room. The flooring change from smooth wooden floorboards to marbled grey tiles was a delineator of space. Bamboo kitchen cabinets lined the back wall of the kitchen area. The polished concrete island housed the stovetop and sink, so one could use them while admiring the ocean view beyond the bed. A teak bar counter served as an additional space divider, so one could sit with one's back to the sea, elbows on the counter, making eye contact with one's breakfast-maker as they bustled around the cooking island. She smiled as she noticed four barstools tucked neatly under the overhang of the teak counter. _Was it coincidence or foresight?_ With Sergio, she'd never be able to rule out excellent anticipatory planning.

"Come in," he encouraged, slipping behind her to the right, his free hand brushing against the small of her back, sending a pleasant tingle up her spine. He stepped into the kitchen, opened a high cabinet and pulled out a large wooden bowl. He held it close to his face, apparently checking for dust. Satisfied, he walked around the island and set it in the middle of the bar counter, then carefully removed the bagged mangoes and placed them, one by one, in the display bowl.

He spun to face her and his expression fell, perhaps worried that she still hadn't moved past the entryway. "I'm sorry, I know it's very small."

"No, no, it's lovely. Perfect in fact," she assured him. "I'm just taking it all in." She noticed two room doors along the leftmost wall of the house. "May I wander?" she asked, not wanting to invade his space.

"Please," he confirmed, insistent. "This is your home too, until we find the next one." 

She placed her left hand on the curved bamboo wall, feeling its ridges and contours as she stepped to her left, slowly following the edge of the house with her hand.

"You can put your backpack in the closet if you'd like."

She looked down and saw her fingers were near a handle. She pulled. Half a dozen suit jackets hung from hangers; several pairs of shoes were stacked in a neat rack. "Excuse me," he whispered near her ear, having come up beside her. His long arm extended past her body into the closet where he retrieved two empty hangers. He handed her one. Her breath caught at the domestic simplicity of the act—she suddenly felt weepy, already in love with their new life together, shocked at how she wanted nothing more than to cohabitate.

"Are you okay?" he checked, having removed his jacket and placed it on the hanger. He reached past her again to tuck it alongside the others. He began casually unbuttoning the cuffs of his sleeves, folding them up with practiced precision, the ends of his forearms becoming visible.

She'd gotten used to seeing him in his handsome white jacket, so the sight of him in his navy dress shirt took her aback all over again. "I couldn't be better," she acknowledged.

Smiling softly, he removed his hat and deposited it on the tall shelf inside the closet. As he bent to remove his shoes and socks, she finally slipped her backpack off her shoulders, hooked the straps onto the hanger he'd given her, and hung it up in the closet too. She balanced on one leg, then the other, while she pulled her heals out of her sandals. She felt momentarily wobbly. She reflexively reached out and pressed her fingers against his right shoulder as he crouched. He didn't flinch; instead, he turned his neck to kiss her wrist, then remained stooped until she'd regained her balance.

He carefully placed his shoes on the closet floor, leaving considerable space for hers. She nestled her small sandals alongside his big shoes. She liked how they looked, side by side.

She sighed and stood up, avoiding eye contact; if she locked eyes with him now, she worried she'd burst into delirious tears. She resumed walking the perimeter of the room, reaching the far left wall and its pair of doors. She pulled on door number one and peered into a compact, notably clean bathroom. Its single high window faced the palm trees beside the house. The doorless shower stall was economically covered in the same tile as the kitchen.

She moved on to the second door and pulled it open. She found herself looking into a small room with a twin daybed against the lefthand interior wall, and a writing desk against the opposite wall, beneath a window that overlooked the ocean. A second window straight ahead of her framed the palm grove. Now that she'd seen this corner room, she realized she'd scoped out the entire house.

"See what I mean? We'll need a bigger place," Sergio spoke softly, his voice growing closer with every word as he stepped up behind her. "Though for now, there's a trundle under the daybed we can pull out for Paula."

She felt him reach around her—_her breathing got faster_. His fingers tentatively touched her stomach, as if asking for permission. She leaned heavily back into him, letting her eyes fall shut, feeling his firm chest against her back, feeling his hardening cock against her ass. Evidently emboldened by her return touch, he wrapped himself around her more fully, nuzzling her head, smelling her hair. She crossed her arms and ran her hands along his shirtsleeves, caressing his biceps, then bare forearms, with her thumbs, pulling the two of them as close together as possible, making their embrace unbreakable, hearing his heartbeat through his ribcage, feeling her heart beat in time.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See the end note for a content warning.
> 
> Dedicated to the YouTuber, maitikaHan, who I don't know personally, but whose incredible Serquel videos, "My Strange Addiction," and, "Play With Fire," I listened to on loop while writing this chapter.

Raquel let herself sink into the pleasure of Sergio's arms wrapped around her from behind. Her closed eyes helped her focus on the feeling of his warm body—his pecs, his stomach, his already hard cock. His timidity when he first reached around her was gone; he seemed to trust that as she leaned her shoulders heavily into him, moved her ass unabashedly against him, she was saying: _Yes, please. Yes, more. Yes, now._

Her arms were crossed in front of her as she ran her thumbs along the back of his hands, then up under the cuffs of his shirtsleeves to caress his forearms—the only bare skin available to her. She wanted, she needed, so much more. Reading her mind—or perhaps reading her body—his soft beard tickled the right side of her neck. He nuzzled it; now kissed it. She tilted her head to the left, exposing her vulnerable skin. He obliged, kissing her neck with more urgency, more intensity. She wanted his tender lips on every part of her at once—_she moaned._

His cock responded instantly to her sound, pulsing against her, daring the layers of fabric between them to contain their desire. She grew wet again, and this time she knew she wouldn't have to suppress it; she could follow it to its natural conclusion—she was home.

She spun around within his embrace, reaching up to grasp his neck with her hands. She was planning to kiss him; instead, she found herself staring into his attentive eyes that brimmed with desire. _How was he so fucking sweet and so fucking sexy at the same time? _She could lose herself in his eyes for days...for years. She felt herself smile like some idiot who was experiencing love for the first time. _Was she really that insanely in love with him that she would commit, right now, to sharing their entire life together? __Yes. A hundred times over, yes._

She began attacking the top button of his shirt with her fingers. His fingers immediately replaced hers as he rapidly, dexterously, unbuttoned his shirt from the top down. She almost laughed at how pleasingly impatient he seemed. His modus operandi—no matter the circumstance—was unflinching patience. She liked seeing him shaken out of his normal pattern, his voracity unleashed, his passion let out to play.

In one swift motion, she pulled her shirt up and over her head, tossing it to the floor. To keep her unruly hair out of her face, she shook her head.

He was making quick work of his buttons, so she jerked his shirt out of his pants, and greedily slipped her hands up his shirt, placing them against his stomach, not wanting to wait any longer to feel his skin.

His shirt completely undone, she watched him slip it off one arm, then the other, and let it fall to the floor.

_Her breath hitched._ The last time she'd seen him shirtless, he'd born the bruises she'd thoughtAlberto had inflicted. Now, transfixed by the unbruised sight of him, she ran both palms along his abs, then reached around his ribcage to his back, pulling herself closer to his body, compressing her breasts against his chest, so little space between them that his hot breath warmed her forehead. She angled her face upward, meeting his soft alluring eyes as she dug her fingers into his surprisingly strong shoulder blades.

His fingers touched the small of her back—_oh god!_—her cunt pulsed with desire. He caressed the curve of her spine intently, equaling her need, his gentle palms pulling them together even more tightly, his incredibly hard cock pressed against her pelvis, so near her opening—yet so far away.

Frustrated, she realized her nipples couldn't feel his skin. She stopped kneading his upper back to reach behind herself and unhook her bra. She slipped it off each shoulder and threw it to the floor, as if it was at fault for keeping them a millimeter apart. Hurriedly, she re-embraced him.

Her eyes rolled back in her head at the sensation of her nipples against his naked chest. She felt lightheaded—her psychologists' training reminding her that it was oxytocin and dopamine and norepinephrine coursing through her, her neurochemistry transforming her into a creature of pure want. His hands on her lower back were helping to keep her stable. She felt one of his palms venture lower, over her thin skirt, boldly cupping one of her ass cheeks. Her cunt screamed with yearning, wanting him to spread her open right there and fuck her where they stood.

In a flash, her equilibrium returned; perhaps due to his solid grip on her back and butt, or more likely from a focusing flood of endorphins.

She pushed away from him, promising her pulsing clit this would only delay gratification for a minute, making room between their bodies so she could look down and unbuckle his belt. He joined her in fumbling at the leather strap, fingers comically tripping over one another, her eyes distracted by the taunting shape of his gorgeous cock, desperately wishing she had x-ray vision. His belt successfully unhooked, he yanked it dramatically out of his belt loops, dropping it to the floor with a _clank_ as the metal buckle hit the ground.

She pulled her skirt down over her hips, leaving her white panties in place, grinning to herself as she watched him freeze, distracted from his own disrobing by her skirt falling to the floor. She kicked it free of her ankles and stepped towards him as he swallowed. His chest rose and fell with increasing speed, like a plane accelerating its engines before takeoff. Without breaking eye contact, she deftly unbuttoned his pants, frowning at him to indicate she wanted him to hurry and strip. Taking her cue, he unzipped his trousers, not taking his eyes off hers as he lifted his feet one by one, almost losing his balance in his rush to tug his pants off his legs. Ankles freed of the fabric, he kicked them aside more vehemently than necessary. They slid across the floor, hitting the wall.

She felt her own breath quicken now, entranced by his barely clothed body, his white boxers still hiding the rest of him from her sight. Even though he'd been naked in front of her before, from the slope of his shoulders and bend of his neck, she could tell he was self-conscious beneath her gaze. _What could he possibly be nervous about? _He unequivocally turned her on more than any partner she'd ever had. She was insanely aroused by him; her moist panties proved it. She wanted to assure him of his perfection but couldn't be bothered by words, so she stepped right up to him, rose up on her toes, grabbed the nape of his neck, and pulled him towards her. Their mouths met and her eyes shut and she kissed him with determination, opening her mouth to him like she longed to open her labia, _mmmming_ sounds of hunger and satisfaction, hoping he was getting her message: _that to her, he was a fucking sex god._

Out of breath, she pulled away, letting her heals return to the floor. She watched him reopen his eyes and was gratified to see that he now looked as contentedly confident as he should. He broke into a smile so pure, so broad, his exquisite dimples emerged. Grabbing him by the hand, she pulled him toward the middle of the room and his large inviting bed beneath the windows. Her experience with stakeouts and snipers gave her insight into lines of sight: thanks to the house stilts and window height, even if someone strolled along the beach, she was certain she and Sergio wouldn't be seen.

"Sit," she directed when they reached the foot of the bed. He sat on its edge and pushed his glasses up his nose, then angled his face upward, eyes searching hers.

She stepped towards him and with the inside of her thighs, nudged his knees together so she could stand, straddling his lap. She was enjoying watching his hidden cock rise up against his cotton boxers. His face was lower than hers so she leaned forward, capturing his mouth with her lips. He closed his eyes and opened his mouth to her kiss.

She pulled her hair away from her face, shoving it behind her, then clutched his beautiful cheeks with both hands, tasting his tongue, letting her eyes fall shut—_oh__ god_—she felt his cock perfectly graze the length of her labia, despite the two layers of fabric between them. His cock moved up and down the crotch of her underwear, like a dousing rod that had found water, hovering insistently along her opening.

She whimpered into his mouth every time it traced her slit, feeling her muscles losing control...already. With her eyes closed, her arms sought the tops of his shoulders for support; she leaned heavily on his frame, titling her hips so his uncontrolled cock started banging against her clit, sending wave after glorious wave of pleasure up her body—_dear god!—_she needed to keep herself from coming prematurely.

Perhaps sensing she was holding back, he pressed his firm tongue up into her mouth, somehow timing his brazen thrusts with the surges of his cock, masterfully mimicking the penetration they both craved—_for god's sake!_—she broke off their kiss before she accidentally came. She panted into the dark; he sounded as breathless as she felt. Opening her eyes, she rested her forehead against his. He was grinning, brown eyes sparkling; she grinned back, feeling the same. _Goddamn it, she loved him!_

Without tearing her eyes from his, she reached down between their naked torsos, running her fingers down his abs, slipping her hand under his waistband—_her breath caught—_she gripped his cock.Forehead to forehead, she watched him gasp as she ran her hand up his shaft. She wanted to tear his boxers off him and slide her ravenous cunt onto him; she wanted to ride him till they screamed each other's names.

As if hearing her thoughts and agreeing completely, he used both of his hands to yank down his shorts; she assisted by releasing her hold. Suddenly, his spectacular cock was visible; she could see it at last, erect and free. Before she was even conscious of what she was doing, she'd dropped to her knees and grabbed the base of his shaft; her mouth was devouring his entirety as it pulsed and swelled against her tongue. She closed her eyes and sucked greedily, indulgently, insatiably, as if she'd been starving for a year and vowed not to be hungry again. Her free hand fished blindly until she found his boxers at his knees; she jerked them down his calves, then felt his feet complete the task as they nudged the fabric off his ankles and kicked them away.

"Raquel..." he moaned her name, sounding satisfactorily out of control. She became aware that he was rubbing her shoulders, evidently urging her to stand up. "Please," he implored, "let me give to you."

"Mmmm-mmmm," she disagreed wordlessly. Without taking her mouth off his cock, she ran her tongue up its length, then licked and sucked its tip, enjoying the taste of his pre-cum. With her hand, she redirected his cock into the farthest depths of her mouth and repeated the sequence again. And again.

"Really...Raquel..." he begged, breathing heavily, sounding overcome with emotion but also by the sensation. "It's me who should be giving to you."

Slowly, she slid her mouth all the way off his mouthwatering cock, opening her eyes to admire it before looking up to meet his gaze. "Who says this is for you?" She smirked. Putting her hands on his knees, she stood up regardless, not wanting him to feel uncomfortable. After all, she appreciated the sentiment. He was an overwhelmingly generous lover; more equitable by far than anyone she'd ever had. In fact, if he hadn't already convinced her that he'd had the time of his life, she'd feel guilty about their two nights together and how singularly focused on giving her pleasure he was. Maybe one day he'd learn that she loved his cock in her mouth, but she didn't want to talk right now. Words were a poor substitute for how she felt. She moved one thigh, then the other, to re-straddle his now naked lap.

The crotch of her underwear was soaked, even more than before. She grabbed one of his wrists, then pulled it up between her legs, submitting the physical evidence. Compliantly, his fingers stroked the fabric. "Feel that?" she asked. He nodded, rapt with attention. "I love sucking your cock. You feel so good in any part of me, it makes me lose my mind." She'd thought she didn't have the patience for words, but apparently she wanted him to know. His bare cock brushed up against the crotch of her panties—_she gasped_. It was as if it heard itself being called into action. She burst into laughter; he did too. Her cunt throbbed with longing, famished and jealous, demanding to feel him inside her again. It had been a long fucking year.

"Take off my panties for me," she requested with a wry smile, reaching down to grab his cock, resting her other arm on his shoulder. His fingers froze on either side of her hips, grasping the white fabric. "Sweetheart," she prompted, "I'm not patient like you." He smiled bashfully, then started pulling her underwear down, his eager cock twitching forcefully in her hand. _D__ear god. _His gaze on her uncovered bush felt like the caress of his fingers, the warmth of his breath, the firmness of his shaft all at once, all against her. _How had she waited this goddamn long? _The material strained against her thighs so she stepped back and brought her legs together. Her panties fell to the floor. She stepped out of them, finally free.

Single-minded and stark naked, she remounted his lap, replacing one arm on his shoulder, one hand on his shaft. He jolted upward in her hand; her cunt spasmed in response. She scooted forward and crushed her breasts against his chest, breathing raggedly on his face; in one smooth motion, she rose up on her toes and slid her cunt down onto his cock. _God yes! For fuck's sake! Holy fuck. _She heard herself cry out with unintelligible indistinguishable sounds as she rode up and down on his superbly thick shaft, her pulsing vulva in rapture, her hands clutching the nape of his neck. Her heavy head hung back, lights dancing against her eyelids, time and space void of meaning—there was only this; there was only now.

She felt the soft palm of his hand supportively spread at the arch of her back, superbly aiding her in elevating up, then crashing down. The rhythm was divine; his rhythm was divine. _Dear god, dear god, dear god! Let this never end._ His other hand was pressed against the muscles of her upper spine, protectively preventing her from ever falling back. He was so fucking attentive, he was so fucking hot; she could feel his love with every touch, she could feel his love with every thrust. She ascended into ecstasy, she descended into bliss, leaning back, screaming loud, as his cock plunged up.

She threw herself forward again, finding his mouth in the dark, biting his lips, sucking his ear, resting her face on his neck. Her cunt constricted, again and again, not wanting to let go—she squeezed him tight, taking hold. He was hers; she was his. This was how it was meant to be. "Sergio!" she screamed. His cock impossibly enlarged, surging upward, improbably far. It hit her that this was the first time she'd known, much less said, his real name while making love.

"Sergio," she cried again, wanting to give him the gift of his name on her lips; his cock responded in kind. "Sergio..." She became breathless, losing the ability to speak, riding his cock fast, nearing a new peak. She opened her eyes and saw tears in his—_h__er heart and cunt clenched_. Her hips slowed. "Oh, my love." Their souls were bared; all was revealed. Now and forever they would be their naked selves to each other. 

With her hand, she grasped his jaw from below; she brought her face up close, eyes searching his. Tenderly, she brushed his open mouth with hers—then ravished it, relished it, trying to time travel to Toledo to erase the pain he must have felt when he shared his identity, professed his love, and she rejected it, disbelieving.

She pulled her lips away and returned her arms to the tops of his shoulders. Without abandoning his entranced eyes, she undulated her hips in a new tempo, a new shape. Up and in, down and away; the extra angles easing his cock even deeper inside her_. _She trembled at the pleasure of each point of internal contact_._ His hands cradled her ass cheeks. She accelerated her pace, his handgrip intensifying, her spine maintaining its rolling wave. 

Each exalting ride up and exhilarating ride down, she contracted around his shaft. He jounced upward with his hips, meeting her rhythm, feeding her hunger, ramming his intoxicating cock up into her as she screamed. "Dear god, Sergio!"

"Raquel," he called out to her. She felt his thumb beside her clit, around her clit, atop her clit. "You should come." 

Her whole body shuddered; she heard herself moan.Fireworks erupted against her eyelids. A chaotic wave of energy spasmed through her from all directions, to all directions; there were no directions, she was everywhere at once. Her clit, her labia, her vulva pulsed frenetically, arrhythmically, orgasmically. All energy dispersed, she exhaled loudly. _Holy fuck, Sergio, you really are a sex god._

She heard him laugh lovingly, as if he could hear her thoughts. He was kissing the side of her head—she'd apparently collapsed with her temple against his shoulder. She felt him supporting her lower back with one hand, cradling her neck with his other. With a start, she realized his cock was still hard inside her. _S__he flashed with concern_. "Why didn't you come?" she mumbled, forcing her eyes to open and lifting her excruciatingly heavy head as her blurry vision clarified.

He smiled back at her, the picture of calm. _He was so fucking handsome._ He rubbed her spine assuringly with both hands. "I noticed that you like to orgasm multiple times in a row. So I thought I'd save myself for your second round. Or third. I want to be there for you. I don't want to hold you back." Letting her sleepy eyelids fall shut, she recalled their first night together. After he'd played the piano for her in his decoy hangar, they'd returned to his couch where he'd made her come another time with his adept fingers; he'd quickly learned the chords of her clit, playing her nipples with his lips like a second instrument. Their second night together, after they'd made love in her bed, he'd made her come a second time in a luxurious prolonged session with his tongue on her clit, somehow bringing her to the point of climax and keeping her there for so long that by the time she finally came, he was ready to fuck again. "That's my hypothesis, anyway..." He sounded increasingly unsure. She opened her eyes just as he pushed his glasses up his nose. "I know two nights is a small sample size, so if I'm wrong about what you want, what you like, I apologize..."

She interrupted by pressing her mouth passionately against his, wanting to assure him he was not only correct, but that she adored his thoughtfulness. His sudden hand on the back of her head and fervor of his return kiss confirmed that her message was received. She rotated her hips horizontally, like a tilt-a-whirl, enjoying the comfortable feeling of his cock twitching inside her and her cunt squeezing back; his cock making itself known without rushing the moment. The movements of their kiss, their hips, their hands on each other's heads synchronized effortlessly, his tongue dancing with hers, her momentary tiredness transformed into blissful repose. Elated, loose, high on her own oxytocin, she was aroused and ready for round two.

She whimpered with regret as she pulled her lips away from his, reminding herself that it would be worth it. With a supportive boost from his hand on her ass, she raised her hips and felt the decadent sensation of her cunt gliding all the way up his majestic cock. It was almost criminal that she was going to get to have him again. As she slid back down, she was struck by the ease of their coupling, the perfection of their fit. It was as if his cock had been made for her. She wasn't one of those people who believed in fate, and yet, if she didn't know any better, she'd say their bodies—and their souls—interlocked like two seamless parts of a whole.

She rode up and down with increasing speed, tightening her muscles around his shaft, his cock flexing ardently in response, fulfilling her gluttony with his succulent girth. His fingers slid suggestively down her upper back, around her ribcage, down her waist, below her belly button; the entirety of her sweating body vibrated with anticipation. His thumb reached her clit. "God, yes," she affirmed. "Right there." He rubbed it as she moaned. Her head lolled back and her eyes closed. She clutched the back of his shoulders, inviting him to stroke her more freely, more intensely, her grip trying to prove that she wouldn't collapse. Understanding her signal, he pressed more firmly on her flesh, tracing a fine pattern around her mound, sending shockwaves of psychedelic pleasure up her spine and shooting out the crown of her head—like a bolt of lightning in reverse, catalytic energy originating from his touch, then thunderously cracking out into the universe.

It took all the concentration she could muster to keep ascending and descending on his shaft and not give in to the draw to dissolve like putty between his hands. "Do you want to lay down?" he asked softly, apparently aware of how close she was to unraveling completely.

She shook her head into the dark, realizing that even though her eyelids were shut, his face was etched for all time in her mind's eye, colors cascading through the imaginary sky, framing his spectacled face, his infinitely adoring gaze. She could feel him massaging her throbbing clit with singular, unbroken attention, like an artist committed to mastery, who loved nothing more than being absorbed by his work. Her nub quivered beneath his conscientious touch—it trembled with need; it thrummed. "God, Sergio...yes..."

The dual stimulation was blowing her mind, sending simultaneous tsunamis of satisfaction through her body, his magnificent cock thrusting upward while his thumb conducted an orchestral rhapsody. "Your thumb...a little higher..." A polyphonic fugue reverberated through her. "To the left...god yesssss," she requested between raspy breaths. He obliged, keeping her anchored with his other hand on the base of her spine. Improbably, she felt his breath on her neck; somehow he had the presence of mind to engage her vulnerable skin in yet another place at the same time. He nibbled her neck, polished her clit, kneaded her ass, all while feeding his shaft to her voracious cunt. Her breathing became uneven, barely holding herself up.

"I'm gonna come..." she cried between labored breaths. She felt his lips brush her jaw, her eyelid, her forehead—kissing every passing part of her urgently, encouragingly, as if he wanted nothing more than to coax her into ecstasy. Her heart and cunt were more splayed open to him than they had been to anyone before in her life. _She loved fucking him—she fucking loved him. She wanted to tell him._ She opened her mouth to speak and instead heard herself scream; her teeth clamped down on the top of his shoulder as a multilayered symphony erupted within her, this second climax a complex cacophony of unrelenting, concurrent crescendoes. Her vulva trembled, uncontrolled, as the blood in her veins rushed to the scene and now didn't know where to go. Her clit pounded too—frenetic, demanding. Her spine shook. Her lungs deflated. She sighed; she quieted.

She tried to keep herself alert, to tune in, to see if he'd come. She felt his lips nuzzling the side of her head—she'd apparently lain it on his shoulder again. His arms were securely around her, his palms caressing her spine; she noticed she was slumped against him, more embarrassingly dependent on his strength than she would've liked. "Let's get you laying down," he murmured against her temple.

She felt one of his hands slide down her back, then cup her butt, guiding her sopping wet cunt up and off his hard cock. _He still hadn't come_—she felt a stab of guilt, yet obediently dismounted. Standing weakly, feeling docile, eyelids flitting open sporadically, she was vaguely aware of the relative directions of the floor and ceiling; she became cognizant that her hands and forearms were against his chest and she was heavily leaning. Escorted by his gentle sturdy palms, she allowed her body to be eased up and onto the bed. Sightlessly, she crawled just high enough to lay on her side and relax her spine.

Her head sunk onto the mattress and she nestled against the linen, feeling supported by a cloud; she imagined hearing seabirds and ocean waves, and tasting a thin trace of salt in the air. She giggled, realizing the shoreside sounds weren't in her head: they were real, this was real. He was real. "What's so funny?" he inquired quietly, apparently entertained by her mysterious amusement. She blindly reached out with a limp hand and found his seated thigh, the side of a bent knee. She patted. _Yes, he was definitely real_. She snickered to herself, at herself, feeling grateful and peaceful and smug, marveling that they'd managed to get away from it all, after all. "Hmmm?" he prompted again, obviously intrigued. She wanted to share—_she really did!_—but speech eluded her. Words felt distant, ungraspable. She pressed her face into the sheets, feeling so smitten, she was almost shy to admit how infatuated she was with him.

His fingers traveled tenderly down her side—along her shoulder, her ribs, her waist, her hip, her thigh—then back up again, grounding her with his undeniable affection. _My god, she was lucky. _"I..." She tried to compel her verbal faculties to return. "I feel so..." Articulation remained elusive.

"Happy?" he offered. She opened her eyes, flinching at the brightness of the natural light; she felt a smile spread across her face as he came into focus. He sat naked beside her with one leg hanging off the bed, the other leg folded on its side. His eyebrows were raised expectantly, clearly hoping he'd summed up her feelings.

"Yes, very," she confirmed sincerely. "Though I was going to to say _lucky_."

"Interesting," he mused thoughtfully, reaching up to remove his signature black frames, then scooting up the bed and extending his arm to place them on the nightstand. She shamelessly drunk in the extended view of him. He scooted back down and laid beside her, forehead to forehead, his bent knees against her legs, his right palm under his temple, his left palm finding hers. Their fingers interlaced between them. She locked her pupils on his and settled in, deepening her smile, looking forward to whatever was on his mind. To the rest of the world, he might be an enigma, but to her, he was an open book—one she wanted to read for the rest of her life.

"Personally," he confided, tone hushed. "I believe we make our own luck. Of course, we're all born into different environments, which come with varying conditions, some favorable, some not. And it's with those conditions, using those conditions, that we create opportunities—or don't. Yes, life present an incalculable amount of randomness, but I think we're responsible for rising to the unpredictability, controlling the vagaries when we can, adjusting our decisions accordingly, taking action. So if you're happy right now, Raquel..." His voice cracked. "...which I deeply hope you are..." His somber eyes instantly welled, causing hers to do the same; she'd never been someone who cried easily, but with him—in Toledo, at Alcantara, and now here—whenever he teared up, she inexplicably did too. "..._luck_ is an incomplete descriptor for how this moment came to be. You made choices; you acted." He squeezed their interlocked hands. "So did I."

She lifted her free hand and gently ran the tips of her fingers along his cheek. From the subtle flutter of his eyelids, he appeared to relish every pinpoint of contact. Back in Toledo, he'd insisted that neither of them had chosen to fall in love with the other, but now they _had_ chosen—and at a hefty price—to do something about it. They'd seized the opportunity.

A smile finally emerged on his face, her contentment hopefully rubbing off on him. She scooched even closer and tilted her chin so she could briefly brush her lips against his. She kissed him softly, purposefully. His cock pulsed up and bumped her thigh. _That's right! He still hadn't come!_

"So what do you believe?" he whispered after their lips parted. "How much or how little control do we have over our lives?" His eyes were attuned to hers, genuinely curious to hear. She found it endearing that he was veering into philosophy and away from foreplay. "What do you think about chance and conditions and opportunity?"

She smirked. "I think you should get on top of me and fuck me until you come."

His eyes widened and his mouth hung open.

She laughed good-naturedly, then kissed the tip of his nose. She rolled onto her back and slid herself farther up the mattress. Laying her head on the pillow at the head of the bed, she stretched out comfortably, then peered down at him. He was frozen in place, startled and staring. She pushed herself up on her elbows, meeting his gaze. "That's not a non sequitur, you know," she clarified with a shrug. "That's my response to your question. Our philosophies are aligned, my dear, so get up here." She grinned roguishly. "Make the most of these conditions and create the opportunity for an orgasm."

He broke into joyous laughter, his dimples accentuating his beauty. She was beyond delighted—_she was thrilled!_—that she'd been able give him a moment of joie de vivre; she couldn't wait to figure out more ways, every day, to make him laugh. He rolled onto his stomach and planted a palm on either side of her legs, nudging her calves apart so he could insert himself in the intervening space. She looked down the length of her body, between her breasts, beyond her belly button, reveling in the resplendent sight of him, holding himself up on his sturdy shoulders and headed up her frame. He made eye contact with her; they mirrored each other's ridiculous grins. She dropped her elbows and let her head fall back against the pillow, laughing blissfully to herself as her eyes flitted across the teak ceiling.

_She gasped__. _He'd pecked the top of her thigh once, now kissed it a second time. His lips lingered, salaciously, against her skin. She felt his hot breath trace a line toward the inside of her thigh..._o__h Jesus, he was going to give to her again! _His devotion to her orgasms was unrelenting; she really needed to do something about it! _Her eyes rolled back, then shut—_he scandalously suckled the tender flesh of her leg, dangerously high on her inner thigh. She spread her legs apart without meaning to, opening herself up..._but she'd planned to give to him this time! _She felt his warm exhales hovering just above her clit—_good lord!_—her neck snapped to the side, her cheek depressing the pillow as his silken lips brushed the lips of her cunt.

He lightly inserted the tip of his tongue between her folds, then ran it all the way up her slit—_her breath caught_—his tongue circled her clit. She whimpered, her nib still sensitive from the last breathtaking orgasm. Reading her correctly, he flicked her clit gingerly: enough to rouse her lust, but not so much that it triggered a ticklish paroxysm. Her cunt stirred, then tremored, reawakening from its dormancy, refreshed and lascivious, already keen for another go.

She felt his strong hands on each of her thighs, carefully spreading her apart, as if preparing to feast on her already pampered cunt. Feeling suggestible, pliable, at the mercy of her own insatiable appetite and his sensual direction, she let her thighs be guided wider. His capable hands slipped under her ass cheeks. She could feel him ensconcing himself between her thighs as if taking up residence. She opened her mouth to protest, to remind him that he'd already given to her twice, and that it was unequivocally his turn, or at the very least, his turn to come with her. "Sergio..." she called down to him, but it came out as a moan; he redoubled his efforts, likely feeling urged on. He licked her clit more firmly, more fervently, lifting her pelvis toward his mouth, audaciously. She arched her back, despite herself, a captive to the alluring pull to let herself lose control.

He again inserted his tongue between her labia, this time probing her deeply—tasting her, tempting her, enlivening her, invigorating her—exploring the reaches of her cunt with each sumptuous plunge. She was riveted by the sensation of his bold tongue investigating her hidden interior. His guttural hums demonstrated his enjoyment, yet she wished his cock was inside her instead so she could be sure his sexual yen was also being met. "Sergio..." she chanted, out of breath before she could explain. He ran his tongue luxuriantly up her folds, repeatedly licking her slit from bottom to top, varying his depth and speed, keeping her guessing, heightening her longing. 

"Seriously..." she intoned into the dark, focusing on her words as much as she could, unavoidably distracted by the return of his tongue to her pulsing nub. He sucked it, then licked it, then sucked it some more, delicately playing her quavering flesh, cycling through a sequence of tempos she couldn't predict. She was shocked she couldn't anticipate the harmonies he was strumming into her with his tongue, because as she experienced each note, it felt melodically perfect—like a favorite song she only now recalled.

Lightheaded, she continued her climb past the clouds, layer after wispy layer, as he shepherded her upward, easing her through the altitude. Short of breath, she was surprised to find herself miraculously close to a new plateau. She bit the inside of her lip to keep herself from reaching the peak—_s__he moaned_. Urgently, she dug her fingers against the back of his head. "Please..." she cried out, massaging him, both to thank him and to get his attention. Instead of pausing, he moved his tongue off her clit and thrust it into her depths again, his fingers seamlessly picking up where his tongue left off. His dexterity was impressive, the coordinated movements of his fingers and tongue catalyzing a series of celestial spasms that rocketed her even higher.

Elated and still ascending, she savored the complementary opulence of his adept tongue inside her, his agile fingers against her; she teetered on the ethereal edge of heaven. To prevent herself from coming, she channeled all her energy into a last-ditch effort—she raised herself up on her elbows and forced her eyes open. Panting, she blearily gaped down at him, feeling a rush of exhilaration at the intimate tableau of his gorgeous prone body between her legs. "Sweetheart...come up here...come with me...I want you to join me."

He lifted his forehead. Their eyes met; she wondered if hers looked as unfocused as she felt. His, on the other hand, were clear, poised, and amorous. He broke into a divine smile that ravaged her racing heart. Without breaking eye contact, he used the fingers of his right hand to spread her folds apart. Eyes still locked on hers, he extended his tongue, then decadently licked her clit. _Holy fuck. _She gasped loudly at the eroticism of looking into his innately seductive eyes while he deliberately drove her mad. "Are you sure you don't want more of this?" he checked knowingly, his voice husky. She felt her eyelids flutter, overwhelmed. He was so insanely sexy.

"I'm sure I _do_ want more," she breathlessly admitted.

"Then why not let yourself have it?" he incanted. His lustful eyes remained on hers as he provocatively licked her clit again. She moaned with pleasure, unable to tear her eyes off him, unable to stop watching him skillfully undo her, lick after feverish lick, in crazy-making succession. All at once, her elbows collapsed and her head fell back; her eyes closed and her fingers clutched his scalp. She screamed incoherently, as luminescent sparks exploded across the canvass of her eyelids, a spine shattering orgasm ripping through her with a power so unearthly, otherworldly, it was unlike any force she'd ever experienced. Her mind went blank. Time stopped. All was still.

"Raquel," he murmured her name like he was reciting a prayer. Her expansive consciousness felt bathed in a blessed serenity. Her senses felt transcendent. Every sound bore a secret meaning: she heard him inhale with reverence and exhale with satiation. She felt his caring lips brush her slackened thigh, then peck her deflated abdomen—_below her navel, above her navel, to the left and right of her navel_—like an inverted blessing, holy and sacrosanct. His lax left hand slipped out from under her butt and he slowly removed himself from between her legs, sliding up to lay alongside her. She wanted to talk to him, to make plans to give to him, but her mind was so calm, her body felt weak.

She opened her eyes and was greeted by his relaxed smile. Though she was on her back, shoulders limp against the bed, her head was on its side, neck too tired to perform even the smallest act. She loved being close to him like this, sharing a pillow, exchanging a tranquil gaze. She felt spiritually fulfilled in a way she never had: she knew that from this day forward, whenever she opened her eyes, his was the first face she wanted to see. "Maybe it's time for that nap," he whispered, dimples flashing.

She blinked at him, not comprehending. "Are you fucking kidding?" she blurted, feeling confused, sharply hurt, her euphoric bubble pierced. _Why didn't he want her? _His eyes grew wide and bewildered. "We can't be done," she expounded. "You haven't even come." 

"Oh, I see," he replied with a newfound smile. "Don't worry about me." He reached out with his left hand and ran the tips of his fingers along her cheek, mirroring her soothing gesture from several minutes ago. "You seem tired. You've been through a lot."

Her heart constricted with fear. "You're making me nervous," she revealed. "Is the attraction is one-sided?" she asked, throat dry. "Here I am, losing my mind with you, over and over again, and I don't even make you come."

Shock swept across his face. "That couldn't be further from the truth, Raquel. I can assure you..." His eyes were plaintive. "...the only force more powerful than my desire for you is my desire to give to you."

The vise on her heart released. _She knew it was true._

He looked stricken and sorrowful, perhaps devastated to discover that even after everything they'd been through, everything he'd risked, she still seemed not to know how he felt about her. She was furious at herself for reviving his memories of Madrid, when he'd shared, again and again, that his heart was hers, all while she'd cursed him, slapped him, pointed a gun at him, unable to hear the truth.

"I didn't even know it was possible to be so attracted to someone," he confessed. "The slightest thought of you triggers a thirst in me I didn't know existed, and only you can quench it," he implored, increasingly desperate. "I'm madly in love with you, Raquel." His cock twitched up, grazing the side of her leg, apparently stirred by his profession of love. "I would withhold anything from myself if it meant being able to bring you more joy."

Her cheeks felt flush; she was embarrassed by her temporary paranoia and relieved that her self-doubt was unfounded. _How comically absurd her terror had been! _

She rolled onto her side and sidled closer to him, planting her forehead against his chest, shutting her eyes. She inhaled the scent of his bare skin, enjoying the feeling of his cock pressed pleasantly against her abdomen. Being cozied up to him like this—the most vulnerable parts of themselves facing one another, their spines on the outside, protecting the haven between them—was the most comforting feeling in the world. She savored his hand on the back of her neck, smoothing her hair, his jaw nuzzling the top of her head protectively, as if wanting to dispel her self-defeating fears and anchor her in their indisputable mutual adoration.

She pulled her forehead off his sternum and angled her face upward. His soulful pupils still vibrated with concern, perhaps pained by her lack of trust. "It's impossible not to believe you," she assured him, sentimentally recalling how he'd said those words to her at the Hanoi, after she'd told him about Alberto's abuse.

His eyes softened and he sighed, his fear apparently assuaged. He ran his fingers dotingly through her hair, perhaps remembering when he'd said those words too, perhaps relishing the intimate proximity of the present.

"Though I'd like you to _show_ me, not just _tell_ me, how you feel," she pointed out, then surprised herself by giggling—likely her body's way of releasing the tension from her recent anxiety spike.

He nodded once, like a pledge, then bent his neck towards her; she tilted her chin up in response. She felt his lips on hers for a blissful second, as if sealing their attestations.

As their mouths separated and their eyes reconnected, she felt herself smile. "Do you enjoy feeling me come?" she asked, nonchalant.

"Y-yes," he stammered. "As a matter of fact, I do."

"Then don't deny me the same pleasure."

His hand stopped running through her hair as if his whole body was listening, processing her reasoning. "I hadn't thought of it from that perspective," he conceded.

"Besides," she continued, "joy isn't a zero-sum game, where one person's pleasure takes away from someone else's." Her cunt pulsed, aroused by her own implication. She lowered her voice, secretively. "I bet my favorite orgasm today will be when we climax together."

His Adam's apple rose and fell. If he'd been wearing his glasses, she was confident he'd be pushing them needlessly up his nose. "Excellent points," he granted, blinking rapidly. "I apologize for being so dumb about..." He seemed to be struggling, uncharacteristically, to find the right word or phrase. "...all this."

She wondered what he meant, but didn't want to ask, in case that would get him stuck in his head. "Don't apologize," she corrected. "If you love me, let yourself enjoy me."

One side of his mouth turned upward, making him appear both bashful and emboldened. Her heart fluttered. He was her beautiful paradox. His deep brown eyes were unwaveringly caring; she was tickled to see his pupils dilated with lust. She felt his left knee move between her legs, nudging her to lay back. She broke into a rakish grin as her spine settled against the bed and he rolled on top of her in one graceful movement. He planted a palm on either side of her and brawnily pushed himself up, suspending his body above her, tantalizing them both, preventing their skin from touching. 

Seeing him from this position, she realized he'd never been on top of her before. She'd only ever ridden him: on the couch at his fake hangar, in bed at her house, and now here. He hovered his mouth over hers, his wanton exhales heating her cheeks, her face tingling with sensual excitement. He must have seen the titillating impact of his breath on her skin because he brought his mouth down to graze her neck, her clavicle, the top of her breast. A whimper escaped her lips as he blew on her areola. He flicked her nipple—just once—with his tongue. Her clit and labia stirred in response, teased awake by the reminder of what he was capable of doing; her slit instantly became a fault line of fiery yearning.

He moved back up her frame, returning his amorous eyes to hers. His jaw was slightly open, locked in what looked like concentration. _Her breath caught_—she felt the tip of his cock skim imprecisely along her bush. The fleeting contact ended, heightening her longing.

He lowered his hips enough for his cock to glance off her again—_temptingly near her clit, achingly near her slit_. A series of near misses whipped her cunt into a frenzy of desire.

Freshly wet, hungrier for him than ever, she heard herself whimper. Responding to her sound, he adjusted his angle and thrusted with intent. The side of his shaft slid along her moist labia. "Grab your cock and guide it inside me," she instructed urgently.

Expeditiously, he abandoned his palm placement on the bed and rose up on his knees between her thighs. She watched his cock move of its own accord, surging towards her, enticingly near her opening. She slid her feet up the mattress and bent her knees so they framed his upright body. She loved this snapshot of him: his face and torso and cock perfectly situated above her. He must have noticed that she was blatantly staring because he smiled shyly, his dimples revealing his demur nature.

_Her heart melted_—his humility in private was a striking juxtaposition to the audacious daring of the person who'd orchestrated the biggest heist in the history of the world.

To make it easier for him, she reached down between her legs and grabbed his twitching shaft. She lifted her pelvis up, placing the hard tip of his cock against her slick entrance, just as he pushed forward. She was gratified to see his mouth form a silent moan as the juices of her cunt easily welcomed him. _God yes. _He slid right inside her, as if he belonged within her. He adroitly caught himself with both hands as he fell forward, supporting his torso with his strong shoulders._ Goddamn, he felt good._

She lifted her feet and perched her heals on his lower back and butt, in case it was possible for him to venture deeper. He obliged, pressing his hips forward, his cock probing as far as it could go. She wanted more, so she slid her right leg off his back, then folded it up towards her chest. Reading her body language, he lifted his arm to make way; she extended her leg into the space between them. Her hamstring stretched pleasantly as she pointed her foot toward the ceiling, then rested her ankle on his shoulder. He replaced his hand on the mattress, causing her stretch to deepen—_god, yes_—and creating the intoxicating sensation of his cock activating another part of her. Her vulva pulsed with gratitude.

She basked in the sublime feeling of him nestled inside her, not yet pumping, not yet thrusting, as if they were enjoying the ambrosial calm before a wild storm. She watched his chest rise and fall; he was breathing heavily and his eyes were wide. She laughed adoringly. Maybe he wasn't used to flexible lovers. Her laughter settled into a grin so broad her face hurt.

He turned his neck and kissed her calf. His awestruck eyes found hers again. "Raquel, I want you to know..."

She shoved her left hand up against his lips. "No more talking," she interrupted. "Just doing." She didn't need him to say what emanated from his eyes. He lusted after her just as much as she lusted after him. He cherished her just as much as she cherished him. They were each inexplicably, inextricably in love, and she didn't need words to know it in her core.

He nodded once, agreeing to her request, his earnest resolve making her smile even more.

He pulled his hips back, slowly; she savored the feeling of his gliding cock. He thrust forward again, ramming himself so deeply she screamed—in part for the delicious sensation of his solid shaft, but even more for the provocative feeling that he was finally giving in to his repressed sexual desire.

She watched his eyes roll as he pulled back, then pushed forward again. _God, yes. _His ardor was so potent, his vulnerability so palpable. She loved seeing him like this; it meant he trusted her with his heart.

Tempo increasing, he pumped with conviction, communicating his devotion with every plunge. _Holy fuck. _She felt herself spasm around his cock, like seismic warnings before a big quake. Her eyes flickered closed, her lungs barely in use. Her nervous system was singularly focused on the pleasure shooting through her, stemming from the glorious fusion of their bodies, the addictive sensation of the most intimate part of him being welcomed inside the most intimate part of her. _For fuck's sake, yes. _She became aware of a sound, then realized she was making it. She was moaning and whining and screaming all at once, with existential joy.

She reopened her eyes because she missed the sight of his face. It took her breath away to see her leg near his head, pressed against his upper arm. His mouth was slightly open, his eyes intermittently closed. He was so goddamn beautiful when he let himself go, ceding power to his animal brain and giving in to his primal desire, which turned out to be a desire for her. He pounded his cock into her like he was delivering a love sonnet, intensely focused on each line, every poetic thrust like a gift to them both. She gasped as it hit her: _she was being lovingly fucked by the love of her life._ No wonder she felt fucking euphoric.

Her fingers were searching futilely for a way to grip the mattress. She slid her arms upward, finding his sturdy wrists beside her head. She grasped each one intently, mooring herself to two secure pylons to keep herself from floating out to sea. She moan-screamed as he slammed into her even harder, even faster, rightly interpreting her anchoring as an invitation for more.

Her appetite for him was infinite, her cunt greedily devouring his stunning cock. Her unrestrained voice was the soundtrack to her consciousness expanding outward through the universe, journeying through space, circumnavigating planets, merging with molten stars.

A single touch of her clit would prompt her to climax, right now. "Let me feel you lose control," she murmured, breathless, unsure whether he could hear her. He must have been able to, because he accelerated pumping to a feverish pace, his cock somehow enlarging further, pulsating uncontrollably; she shot her hand between her legs and pressed her clit with her fingertips. _D__ear god. _His cock erupted with a chain of spasms, activating response contractions from her vulva, her fingers perfectly timing her climax as they simultaneously came. Ecstasy overtook her; bliss pervaded all.

_She caught her breath._

_She heard him doing the same._

His cock relaxed within her, then slipped out. His cum flowed freely out of her loose, sopping wet cunt, her juices and his intermixing.

She felt him carefully collapse to her right. She blindly reached out despite her exhaustion, wanting to touch any part of him. She found his stomach with her hand. It was moist from sweat, rising and falling as he continued to catch his breath. She laid her palm against it, then timed her inhales and exhales with his. She adored this feeling of laying side by side on their backs, breathing together.

"I don't think I've ever been happier," she mumbled.

"I know I haven't," he replied sincerely.

She opened her eyes to the teak ceiling. She turned her head towards him. She watched him do the same. He met her eyes and grinned with a goofy bliss, the exact mirror of how she felt.

_She yawned._

_He yawned in response._

She smiled at their shared sleepiness. His eyes sparkled with contentment, too.

She rolled away from him onto her side, then scooted backward. He took her cue, wrapping himself around her from behind. She felt his hand on her waist as he bent his knees, creating the perfect space for her butt to tuck into. She scooted back, closing the space between them, nestling her rear end back against him.

His exhales warmed the nape of her neck. She felt his sleepy lips graze her shoulder, sending a delicious tingle of electricity down her spine.

She angled her neck up, suddenly needing to kiss him in return. He must have understood her desire because he lifted his head off the pillow and hovered his face above hers, enabling them to make eye contact, once again. He looked more serene than she'd ever seen him. His mouth descended slowly upon her lips. They kissed each other softly, tenderly—the brief touch imbued with commitment.

He pulled his lips away. His eyes were almost sorrowful, as if he wished their lips never needed to part.

She exhaled with longing, feeling the same, reminding herself this wasn't a fleeting experience; they wouldn't be ripped apart by cruel fate tomorrow.

He smiled fondly at her, perhaps reminding himself of something similar. She smiled back, relaxing into the fact that if they each wanted, they could indeed have one another every day for the rest of time.

Satisfied with her forecast of the future, she broke eye contact and relaid her cheek on the pillow. She felt his head return to his spot behind her, his breath heating the back of her neck. His broad palm glided off her waist to her belly, gently pulling himself even more tightly against her.

She placed her hand atop his to prevent it from ever leaving, enjoying the feeling of her butt resting comfortably against his sleeping cock. The skin of her backside and the skin of his frontside were in delicious indivisible contact; his lips were drowsily brushing her shoulder, half nibble, half kiss.

_She heard him yawn. _

_She yawned again, too._

She couldn't keep her eyes open; she was being called away from this waking dream into a sleeping one. She felt a smile emerge on her face as she realized that no matter what her subconscious dreamt, nothing could be better than her reality.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: this chapter is Explicit. If you prefer to avoid Explicit content, you can skip this chapter entirely and move on to Chapter 5.
> 
> \--
> 
> Well, that was my first time writing smut! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Feeling a little self-conscious, which I bet is pretty normal!
> 
> I'm curious to hear if there were any parts that felt too long or too tedious, which you'd recommend I trim down. I realize I may have gone a bit overboard with the detail. :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See the end note for trigger warnings for this chapter!

"Raquel," he whispered, wishing he didn't need to wake her. His cheek rested on a tangle of her soft brown hair. He'd been memorizing the curve of her bare shoulder and the feeling of her rear tucked against his thighs. He could feel her belly rise and fall against the palm of his hand, slow and steady. He suspected she was in the third phase of sleep, when the body regrows tissue and strengthens the immune system. It's why he dearly wanted to leave her be. She deserved a break...from everything.

Delicately, he lifted his head off their shared pillow and propped himself up on his elbow, careful not to shift his hand off her stomach or disturb their nestled lower bodies. He gazed down at her sleeping face. _She took his breath away._ Even asleep she was a force: radiant, powerful, a presence like none other. The rest of the world was greyscale to him; she was the only person in color.

It hit him that until he'd met her, so many metaphors about love had been meaningless. He'd thought they were imaginative turns of phrase without a physiological basis, but with Raquel—and only Raquel—he'd experienced sensations he hadn't known existed: he'd felt time stop, he'd heard his heart beat through his chest, he'd felt it swell so much his ribs hurt. It was as if the universe had bypassed his brain and tapped into his senses to say: _Very few people ever come across their soulmate, so don't screw this up. There are 7 billion humans on this planet and you found each other; don't you dare let go. _So he hadn't. It's why he'd let her chain him up; it's why he'd put the gun back in her hand. It's why he'd sat at the bamboo bar, every day for a year, waiting for her to come, and having no backup plan for what to do with his life if she didn't.

"Raquel," he incanted, then bent his neck to kiss her shoulder, hoping to wake her in the gentlest way possible. She didn't stir. 

He'd never seen her so relaxed. He hoped she could feel this serene from now on. The late afternoon sun cast a clandestine glow across her temple and cheek. That familiar shade of light had woken him, just minutes ago. After living in this lonely little house for a year, he'd grown attuned to the angles of the sun. So much of his life had been spent indoors, dependent on a digital clock. Now he knew how it felt to rise with the sun, not because he was compelled to answer his alarm and squeeze in a planning session before dawn, but because he could _feel_ the passage of time, the changes of light and temperature and wind. He knew when there were two hours till sunset.

"My love," he ventured again, comforted by the fact that by disturbing her sleep, she would get to see Palawan at golden hour. A smile appeared on her face; perhaps his voice had reached across dream space and was warming her heart, even in slumber. She yawned and snuggled back against him, as if there was nowhere she would rather be. He moved his palm back and forth across her stomach. "I hate to disturb you when you're resting so peacefully," he whispered, "but we should probably get ready to pick up your mom and Paula. It might be nicer for them if we can get them settled in here before dark."

"Mmm-hmm," she hummed her assent without opening her eyes. "It's just so hard to leave this," she murmured, reaching back with her hand and clutching the side of his leg with her fingers.

He had worried she'd be disoriented when she awoke. Instead, she seemed awash in blissful tranquility, as if she'd already adjusted to her new life and her new home; as if she already knew she belonged here, in his arms. "We'll come back to this," he vowed.

"Is that a promise?"

"It is."

"You're good at keeping those." She blinked her eyes open and tilted her face up, finding his eyes with hers. _He startled at the feeling of being deeply seen and deeply loved. _That was the tragic irony of how they'd met. She seemed to know him, just by looking at him; yet, she'd been the primary person he'd had to deceive. It's why tears had come to his eyes today, when they were making love. Since leaving Spain, hearing his name on her lips had been his single biggest fantasy. So many times over the past year, he'd replayed her voice in his head, saying, _Sergio_, right before she'd announced, _I am with you_. The only other times he'd heard her say his name, she'd used the professional tone of a negotiator, or she'd raged at him with justifiable contempt, wielding his name like a weapon. Now, her contented eyes glistened with so much affection, his skin felt flush. "What did you call me just now?" she asked.

"Raquel?"

"Besides that."

"M-my love?" he stuttered, not sure why he felt self-conscious. Saying it had been the most natural thing in the world.

The edges of her mouth turned upward and her eyes fell closed. She returned her cheek to the pillow and scooted back against him even more. "I like the sound of that."

"I'm glad," he confessed, feeling relieved, "because it's accurate." He suddenly realized why he still felt tender. He couldn't forget the slap to his face, the bite of his hand, the kick to his stomach. Logically, he knew she'd left her life in Spain so they could be together; she'd ripped her mother and daughter from their home and community. She'd brought them across the ocean with no intention of going back. He no longer needed to doubt how she felt about him, and yet, some part of him did. It wasn't rational; it was just the pain of the past, persistent echoes reverberating across time.

He leaned down and kissed the side of her neck, attempting to ground himself in the present. He relaid his temple on the pillow behind her and tightened his embrace around her waist. He nuzzled the back of her head, inhaling the sweet, sultry smell of her skin and hair.

"Are you nervous?" she inquired gently.

"Nervous?"

"To see my mom and Paula again."

He swallowed. "No, I'm fine."

She rolled over, turning towards him so they were face to face. His arm was still wrapped around her, his palm now against the small of her back. She nudged her knee between his; he accommodated, adjusting his leg to reach across hers. He marveled at the pleasure of being entwined with her in any configuration. She raised her eyebrows at him, knowingly. "I carry an internal lie detector you know..." She lowered her voice. "...and it just beeped."

"You're right," he confirmed shyly, then tried to explain, "but not because I don't want to see them. I'm just worried I'll make a bad impression and disappoint you."

Her eyes softened. She reached up to stroke his cheek with the tips of her fingers. He briefly closed his eyes, relishing the touch, committing the feeling to memory. "Just be yourself. They'll love you. I know they will."

"What makes you so sure?" he questioned, hoping he didn't sound too pitiable.

She removed her hand from his cheek and slid it around his back. She pulled herself closer, compressing her breasts against his chest and tilting her chin up so they could still make eye contact. "They'll see how I feel about you," she reasoned. "And they'll see how good you are to me. And you'll be sweet to them, without even trying. You don't need to pretend to be something you're not. You're generous and considerate and sweet. That's who you are."

His mouth went dry; he felt even more pressure to live up to her expectations. "It doesn't matter how I feel. Practically speaking, I don't know how to act. I'm an imbecile when it comes to informal human interactions." He could hear his voice speeding up as his anxiety rose. "I can study psychological patterns and design algorithms and predictive protocols, but there are exponential possibilities for what your mom and Paula could say or do, and I can't plan every reaction; I can't practice each response. I'll be improvising in the moment and probabilistically I'm going to make mistakes—a lot of mistakes."

She smiled at him, clearly amused, her eyes glinting with love. _He didn't understand why professing his fears seemed to heighten her affection! _"You just summed up the reality of raising a kid. It's one continuous improvisation. Trust your instincts, and you'll do fine."

"I'm not sure I have any instincts. When I met Paula and she asked if we were dating, I froze. I didn't know what I was supposed to say."

"In most cases, there's no _supposed_ to. Kids ask a lot of questions; they're learning machines. So just remember that everything you do, everything you say, Paula is learning from. You're a truthful person, so answer honestly, but don't tell her more than she can process."

"What's the heuristic for what she can process?"

Raquel giggled, then pressed her forehead against his chest. She regained her composure, then gazed up at him, fondly. "Kids need to feel safe. They need to feel confident that the adults around them are protecting them, so they can relax and be kids. So as you teach Paula about the complexities and injustice of the world, which I'm sure you will, make sure she knows that you and I have _her_ world under control." _His heart skipped a beat. _"Oh, and no guilt please," she continued, eyes sparkling. "I hope you pass on your vocabulary and social consciousness, and I secretly hope you'll teach her piano! But please don't pass on any of that guilt, okay?" She warmheartedly smiled. "In fact, let's make this the year of less guilt for all of us."

He nodded, at a loss for words. He was overwhelmed by how much she trusted him with her daughter, and how she'd spoken about them as a decision-making unit, co-creating a life together.

Perhaps she sensed his speechlessness because she stretched up, brushing his lips with hers. He let his eyes fall shut, and felt her entire body grind against him; she treated kissing like a full-body act. He mirrored her fervor, opening his mouth and inviting her tongue inside, caressing her lower back with his palm, pulling her against him as she undulated her hips. He felt himself harden against her thigh. As much as he wanted to make love to her again, he was concerned about the time. He pulled his lips away from hers and reopened his eyes. "We shouldn't..."

She met his gaze and smiled, both regretful and grateful. She slipped her hand off his back and slid it up between them, stroking his chest with her fingers. "You're right," she acquiesced, then sighed. "Thank you for thinking of Mom and Paula. It'll be good to get them settled in before sundown."

"Unlike you and me, they're not getting to choose to move to the Philippines. I'd like to make their transition here as easy as possible," he revealed, "though I've made peace with the fact that they're likely to resent me for upending their lives."

Sorrow crept across her face. "Mom's life has already been upended, through no fault of anyone's." 

His heart ached in response. "How has she been?"

"Not good." Her eyes drifted down to her hands, which were pressed lightly against his chest. "She's gotten precipitously worse over the last year, and it feels like we're on the edge of another cliff."

"I'm so sorry I wasn't there for you, Raquel."

She looked back up at him, eyes misty. "You were."

He secured his hand against her back. "Well, I'm here in the flesh now."

She nodded, but her eyes were distant, mourning. "Her long-term memory is the strongest, but she doesn't always apply the memories in the right way. Sometimes, I'll overhear her calling Paula, _Raquel_, and then offering to play a game with her that was my favorite at that age. It's all jumbled in her mind—the old memories and the new. So please don't take it personally when she introduces herself to you a hundred times over the next hundred days." She paused, her fingers absently strumming his chest. "Actually, there's a chance she'll have a memory of you from a year ago, when the two of you had coffee and she got you to admit that we'd slept together." She broke into a broad grin. He smiled back, causing her to burst into a beautiful laugh. _How did she manage to __channel the sublime amidst the pathos?_

"I will happily reintroduce myself to her every single day," he pledged.

Her expression sobered. "Thank you."

"How has it been for you? To see her go through this," he checked. He slowly ran his palm up and down her spine.

Her eyes welled up. "It's good of you to ask."

"I want to know," he affirmed.

He heard her exhale and watched her shoulders release a year's worth of tension, maybe more. Her face fell, her characteristic poise crumbling away, exposing her hidden grief. A tear rolled down her cheek. He felt his own tears fall, too.

"It's been hard," she divulged, voice cracking. "And I know it's only going to get harder. It's heartbreaking to stand by, helpless, as someone you love loses their grip on reality. It's like her life was a tower of wooden blocks, each log stacked neatly on the previous one. Then they all got tossed in the air and landed in a heap. Some have splintered altogether. It's disjointed, chaotic; I know it must feel confusing. I can see in her eyes that she's terrified, and I can't do anything to save her." She blinked her tears away, then scoffed wryly. "It's like my life: building blocks I thought would lead to one thing are actually connected to another..." She trailed off, then reached up and brushed his jaw with her thumb.

He gulped. "Even though it isn't what you expected," he managed to croak, "I hope your new life can still be worthwhile." 

"Oh my love," she intoned seriously, moving her hand to the nape of his neck. "I can already tell my new life is more beautiful than anything I could have imagined."

He tilted his chin down as she tilted hers up. His eyes closed as their mouths met. Her vulnerability was palpable, her lips even softer than usual. He could taste her tears, or maybe they were his. The salt commingled pleasantly with the moisture from their mouths, fueling their orchestral kiss, their synchronized lips moving to the apogees and perigees of an enchanting symphony, heavy with resonant tragedy. The trembling violins, the grounding cello, the emotional swells of woods and brass: their song was uniquely theirs. It played through his mind for an unknown period of time, leaving his head refreshingly blank, unaware of anything except for her desirous mouth against his and their ethereal souls willfully and irrevocably enmeshing in the incorporeal space above them.

He felt her lips drop away and he instantly missed her touch. He imagined a final reverberating coda as he opened his eyes. She was looking at him with unabashed tenderness, the crucible of an aging parent apparently easier to bear when shared. "And what about your mom?" she asked, cautiously curious. "I don't know anything about her."

He winced as pain seized his heart. She caressed the back of his neck, assuringly. He nodded, forcing himself to not turn away from her compassionate gaze. "My memories of her are less clear than I would like. She died when I was six."

Her patient eyes brimmed with empathy, conveying that he could take all the time he needed to share whatever he wanted.

"She loved me." He felt a wistful smile emerge. "That's the main thing I remember, even decades later: the feeling of being loved. She was kind. She must have had equanimity because I have zero memories of her being angry or frustrated, even when she was dying. I get the feeling she was quite intelligent, but at six, every adult seems to know more than you, so I can't really be certain." He sighed. "I'm ashamed to say that I didn't really know her. Her disease, the same one that afflicted my brother, wasted her body so rapidly that all my memories of her include a hospital bed."

"You have a brother?" she asked, obviously keen to hear more about his family. Her unwitting use of the present tense was like a knife to his heart.

"_Had_," he clarified. His eyes teared up instantly; he couldn't see her anymore. He felt her hand move from his neck to his cheek, where she rubbed his falling tears with her thumb. He deliberately blinked to clear his sight. He found her sympathetic gaze, then swallowed dryly. "He died in the mint."

Her body tensed in his arms. Her eyes widened. He could tell from her stricken expression that she'd eliminated Moscow and Oslo; the Retroxil was irrefutable evidence. "Fonollosa," she uttered.

"Andrés," he corrected.

She cringed. He guessed that _Andrés de Fonollosa_ was still just the name of a villain to her, a bad guy who got what he deserved.

"Andrés," she repeated respectfully. "I'm sorry," she implored, likely apologizing for slandering Andrés's name in the press, deliberately mislabeling him a predatory sex trafficker instead of a thief who targeted the wealthy. He shook his head slightly, trying to convey that she didn't need to apologize. Andrés had acted out by ordering a hostage killed; if it weren't for Denver's brave refusal, Monica would be dead. Raquel didn't know that Sergio had planted the button in the car as a way to punish his brother. They'd both played a part in his defamation. "He was your half-brother?" she checked, the lilt in her voice betraying that she wanted them to share as little DNA as possible.

"No," he responded, well aware that his answer would come as a disappointment. "We have the same parents. Andrés was always ashamed of our impoverished childhood, so he chose a new surname. He thought it sounded more grand." He felt himself smile, nostalgic for his brother's inexplicable taste, refined palate, and aesthete air. He and Andrés had been forged in the same fire so their tempered cores were similarly resilient, but they'd chosen to cast themselves from different molds.

He could see in Raquel's eyes the lingering horror, and he could feel—for the first time since they'd reunited hours ago—that she was holding back, preventing herself from saying what was on her mind. He could guess what it was—he didn't like to think about it himself—but he couldn't bear to let anything come between them, even the sacred memory of Andrés.

"I don't know, Raquel," he started tentatively, "I don't know if it was brain structure or if we just had different reactions to the loss of our parents, but _yes_. _Yes_ to what you're thinking: we were very different. Shockingly different. He was always a bit...frightening." He'd never admitted that to anyone. "Not to me," he clarified. "Not at all. He was my faithful protector, from childhood until the day he died." 

He wasn't blind to how teenaged Andrés had taken sadistic pleasure in terrorizing Sergio's childhood bullies, and how eager his brother was to institute a dictatorship the moment he got inside the mint. He wished Raquel didn't know Andrés as a monster, as the hostages had likely described. He wished there was an alternate universe where the heist had never happened, where he could introduce Raquel and Andrés over a leisurely dinner, and she could hear how his brother had continued taking care of him after their father had died, and she could see how unflinchingly devoted Andrés was, and how he wanted nothing more than for his little brother to be happy. She slipped her arm around him, kneading his upper back with her fingers, keeping her other hand resting against his chest.

"Do you want to know the greatest irony of all?" he whispered, only able to acknowledge his grief because he felt anchored in her arms. She nodded sincerely. "Since we were young, Andrés insisted that I was missing out on life." He broke into a smile, hearing the distinctive flair and dramatic pitch of his brother's voice. "_Your strategies and plans are meaningless, Sergio. You don't know anything about anything because you're not in love, and love is everything._" He laughed at his poor mimicry of Andrés's theatricality, and was relieved to see Raquel smile in return. She seemed to be soaking up the portrayal of Andrés through his eyes. He felt himself grow somber. "He would've been overjoyed to know that I'd risked the perfect plan for love."

She leaned up. Her lips bushed his cheek as she kissed his remaining tears away. She laid her head back down.

"Ángel shared Ariadne's report with me," she said solemnly, tone hesitant. His heart stopped. He felt her palm press soothingly against his chest, as if she wanted to protect his heart. "Your brother's last words were that he'd been selfish in life and wanted to do something generous as his last act. Then he pushed her head down and ran at the SWAT team."

He blinked at her, emotionally stunned as his mind processed a filmstrip of Andrés's final moments. He didn't want to watch, yet couldn't look away.

"I thought you'd want to know."

He nodded. "Thank you for telling me." He angled his face up and away from hers, so he could slowly and forcefully exhale. He emptied his lungs again, then again. She continued holding him tight, his equilibrium returning with each extended breath. He felt raw, a thin membrane away from resuming crying, but at least he knew it was safe to do so. Raquel would still be with him, regardless. He looked down at her and felt comforted; her warm, loving gaze was unwavering. "So there you have it," he whispered, voice scratchy from the tears. "Now you know all about my family."

"Aunts or uncles? Living grandparents? Cousins?"

He shook his head. "My mom came from a sickly family, my dad came from a small one. I'm the last of my line."

"Have you ever been married?"

"No," he answered quickly, feeling prickly for some reason.

"It wouldn't have been a problem if you had," she pointed out, furrowing her brow, apparently sensing his unease and wanting to understand it.

He figured out why his subconscious was offended by the question: he was certain Raquel was the love of his life and his normally active imagination refused to even consider a hypothetical past where he had married someone else.

"Any children?"

He shook his head, feeling his forehead crease.

"That you know of," she retorted in a cynical, defended tone he'd never heard her use before.

"No," he reiterated, appalled. "I assure you that I would know if I had a child, Raquel. And you would know too, because they'd be here with me."

His adamance must have startled her; her eyes were wide. She shook her head as if clearing her mind. "I'm so sorry dear," she mumbled as she slipped her arm out from around him and rolled onto her back. She stared at the ceiling. "I'm so embarrassed."

He rolled onto his back too, but kept his head turned towards her, his eyes locked on her pensive profile, wanting to reach out, but sensing she needed space. "What was that about?" he wondered softly.

"Not about you, obviously."

He waited, willing to lay and listen to her silence forever.

"I..." she began, then stopped. She sighed shallowly, as if she was too busy processing a new discovery to fully exhale. "I'm realizing I've spent my entire career around colleagues, a husband, even friends, who say misogynistic things every day, as if it's normal. I think I'm so used to biting my tongue, it's gone numb. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard colleagues brag about how many women they've slept with, and how they convinced a woman to have unprotected sex, and how they'd drunkenly forgotten her name or had never learned it in the first place. They boast—if you can believe it—about how there could be countless little copies of them running around."

He felt his blood boil. "Everything about that infuriates me."

"I know." She tilted her neck towards him. Her eyes were steely, and grateful. "You're nothing like those assholes. It may take me some time to adjust. Eventually, it'll sink in that I can lay down my sword and shield." She extended her hand onto the mattress between them. He reached out and interlaced their fingers.

"I don't care if it takes the rest of our lives, Raquel. You and every woman on the planet have the right to be incensed. Frankly, it shocks me that women aren't enraged every moment of every day."

She smiled faintly and squeezed his hand, then let go as she returned her eyes to the ceiling. "I just remembered how it all started. I was twenty-one or twenty-two, out at a bar with my fellow cadets; we were friends from the Academy, we'd all come up together. Even at that age, men were making a sport out of womanizing, recounting their exploits, placing bets on who'd gotten someone pregnant as if it was a point of pride to create offspring you had no intention of supporting. I recall pushing my chair away from the table, slamming my share of the beer money down, and giving them an earful about their disgusting behavior before storming off. They were silent at first, which was satisfying. But by the time I reached the door, the laughter had started. They were a pack of ignorant hyenas: shriveling cowards on their own, but boldly vicious as a group..."

"It was never the same after that," she mused. "I was no longer _one of the boys_. Half the time they'd give me the cold shoulder, which was a relief compared to the alternative, when they'd take turns provoking me. They alternated between lewdly coming onto me, and calling me a _frigid bitch_. I couldn't think of a single person in the force I could go to. Everyone knew that my boss and my boss's boss had mistresses my age and gloated about it. If I wanted to be a police officer, which I desperately did, I decided this was the price. I thought it was my calling to protect citizens, so I drowned out the noise by throwing myself into my work. I never looked back..."

"I wish I could time travel and tell my twenty year old self to not walk out of that bar when they laughed. I could've eviscerated them verbally, and maybe they would've learned that women aren't going to take it. Maybe _I_ would've learned that _I_ didn't have to take it." She scoffed with self-loathing, breaking his heart. _It was those assholes who deserved scorn, not her!_ "You know what? Two of those guys from my cadet class went on to become a couple of Alberto's best friends. I used to see them in my backyard with the other guys from the station, drinking beers with my husband, laughing about who-knows-what. They'd all get quiet when I'd walk up. I'd put on my agreeable smile and ask if it was time to fire up the grill as if everything was fine, as if it was normal to invite chauvinists into one's house, into one's bed..." She fell silent and shut her eyes. "No wonder Alberto could convince himself it was okay to beat me." She suddenly gasped, as if coming up for air after being held underwater. She gaped at the ceiling, wheezing. "Sergio..." She reached out with her hand, trying to find him. "Can you hold me?"

"Anything," he blurted. He rolled onto his side and slowly scooted closer as she turned away. The sight of her vulnerable naked spine shattered his heart. _How could anyone be so evil as to lay a hand on her? He didn't understand human beings! _She reached back, finding the side of his thigh with her hand. She pulled herself into him, burying her spine against his belly, resuming their embrace from before—an embrace that he hoped was beginning to feel like home.

"It makes me want to burn the whole system down," he confessed. "All the patriarchal institutions, the bigoted relics. I wish we could rebuild society. Start it all over again."

"We can," she replied. "We can start it over for _us_." She grabbed his palm and placed it flat against her stomach; she left her hand atop his as she breathed in and out. He could feel her inhales and exhales stabilize, then slow. He synchronized his breathing with hers. "How about this for something radical?" she whispered. "Let's not take up a new cause. Let's not try to save the world. Let's just enjoy ourselves."

"That's a much better plan," he acknowledged.

"A plan that starts with us picking up Mom and Paula."

He nodded, even though she couldn't see him.

"Do you have a change of sheets for this bed?" she asked.

"I do," he replied, puzzled.

"Good. We'll change them before we leave. Mom and Paula are sleeping out here. You and I are taking the little bed in the little room."

"We are?"

"We are. The bed is tiny, but we can cuddle, just like this. You're about to live with an inquisitive eight-year old and a woman with Alzheimer's. Trust me: you will be glad we have a door."

All the metaphors for love hijacked his physiology at once: he felt time stop, he heard his heart beat through his chest, he felt it swell so much his ribs hurt. "Understood," he managed to say before nuzzling the back of her head, inhaling one more lungful of her scent before they ventured into the Palawan golden hour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the heaviness of this chapter, friends! The next chapter will be a well-earned emotional balm to soothe their bravely exposed wounds.
> 
> This chapter has trigger warnings for references to workplace sexual harassment, domestic violence, and physical trauma, as well as the illness and death of a parent, and the death of a sibling.


	6. Chapter 6

Sergio felt his heart beating faster than usual.

He watched Raquel place her hand on the hotel room door. She glanced up at him with her forehead raised, confirming he was ready.

He nodded and pushed his glasses up his nose. He'd never been so nervous to face an eight year old and a sixty five year old.

"Mom!" Paula squealed before the door fully opened. The buoyant little girl looked just as he remembered. She was wearing yellow shorts and a white blouse, and her hair, which was the same color as Raquel's, was a similar length as a year ago. She hopped enthusiastically off the edge of the bed, where she'd been sitting beside the Filipino babysitter, and skipped quickly towards her mother. He held the door open with his hand so Raquel could step inside the doorframe and bend down with outstretched arms. Paula leapt into her mother's embrace with the joyful exuberance of a child who knows their parent will always catch them. "I missed you!" Paula exclaimed cheerily.

As Raquel and Paula hugged, the babysitter smiled warmly and picked up her gold-fringed purse and a plastic bag that appeared to contain soda and red bags of snacks. She nodded at Sergio as she walked past him, out the door. "Salamat," he thanked her with a return nod before she disappeared down the hall. He stepped inside the room and closed the door behind him.

Mariví was standing by the ocean-facing window on the other side of the room. Presumably, she'd been admiring the view before they'd arrived. Now, she was overtly staring at him, her dancing eyes inquisitive. He wondered if she was having one of her lucid moments or not. As he and Raquel had walked hand-in-hand through the enchanting light of golden hour, from his house to this modest hotel by the dock, she'd shared more about what to expect from her mom: _Sometimes she's there, and other times she's not. So you just have to take it moment by moment. _Mariví's expression was serene, so he hoped that either way, his presence wasn't too jarring. He smiled at her, trying to keep her at ease until Raquel could make introductions, or reintroductions, as it were. Mariví smiled back, her ankle-length violet dress blowing lightly in the breeze from the open window behind her.

"Hello," Paula chirped. She unwrapped her arms from around her mom and straightened her back. She looked up at him calmly. "I remember you."

"I remember you too."

"What have I missed? Who is this dear?" Mariví interjected from the other side of the room.

"This is Sergio, Mom," Raquel replied matter-of-factly as she stood up. She placed her hands on Paula's shoulders so she and he could make eye contact as Paula stared at him with laser-like focus.

"And remind me, who is Sergio to us?" Mariví asked tentatively, apparently aware of her own failing memory.

"I'm your daughter's partner, Mariví," he explained. The edges of Raquel's mouth turned upward at his use of the word _partner_, likely recalling how she'd contended that _girlfriend_ and _boyfriend_ were too juvenile to describe who they were to each other. Mariví's eyes grew wide and she blinked several times, perhaps trying to locate missing memories of Raquel and him even dating.

"So you finally asked her?" Paula piped up, her gaze still unwavering.

"We finally asked each other," he responded. He tilted his head at Paula, impressed that she'd remembered that detail from their brief conversation a year ago.

"Why haven't I seen you in a long time?" Paula asked, tilting her head back, in a mirror image of his.

"Well..." Raquel started to answer for him, squeezing her daughter's shoulders, "because Sergio lives here."

"You live in the Philippines?" Paula marveled.

"I do."

"Why?"

"Well, I thought it would be nice to live somewhere sunny, where it never gets too cold..."

"I don't like the cold," Paula interrupted.

"Me neither," he agreed.

"What kind of profession does someone have to have, to be able to live wherever they want?" Mariví chimed in with practiced lightness. He couldn't help but smile. Her performative innocence was just a cover for shrewd investigation; she obviously wanted to figure out if her daughter was dating a jobless bum. Raquel stared disapprovingly at her mother. "Don't look at me like that, dear. When someone of my age asks these kinds of questions, it's not considered rude. It's considered endearing." Mariví walked unhurriedly towards them. "Getting to say what's on one's mind is one of the few privileges of aging." She came to a stop right in front of him, beside Raquel and Paula. Her left hand gripped the wrist of her right, so that her arms hung loosely in front of her. "So tell me, what does my daughter's boyfriend do for a living?"

"_Partner._ Not _boyfriend_," Paula corrected with the profound annoyance of an eight-year-old who just learned a fact and was now shocked that everyone else didn't learn it too.

Raquel broke into beautiful laughter. Her sparkling eyes glinted at him. He grinned back. "That's right," Raquel whispered to Paula, bending to kiss her daughter on the side of the head. "Good listening."

Mariví was still looking at him expectantly, apparently unfazed by Paula's indignation.

"I'm not a beach bum," he informed Mariví, "if that's what you're worried about."

"You're too pale to be a beach bum," Mariví pointed out.

"Mom!" Raquel burst.

"You're absolutely right," he acknowledged with a tip of his head, thoroughly enjoying that keen observations seemed to run in Raquel's family. "And I'm not an heir with a trust fund, if that's what you were hoping for."

"No, that's relieving. The born rich are the worst sort."

"Mom!"

"What?" Mariví protested. "It's true. You feel the same way. I've heard you rant about how the ruling class don't know what real work is like." She waved her hand back and forth, indicating it was a topic more complicated than she cared to discuss. She tilted her neck at her frowning daughter. "Sweetheart..." Her disarming inflection was intended to pacify. "Remember the summer you went from protest to protest? The same summer you got that piece of metal in your nose." She wiggled her finger in the direction of Raquel's left nostril, then dropped her arm. "By the fall, you'd enrolled at the Academy and..." she trailed off, her eyes dropping to the floor. _Had she lost her train of thought, or run across a memory she didn't want to evoke? _Her eyes landed on his shoes and she looked up at him again, perhaps reminded of his presence. "But back to you, young man. What kind of company do you work for that lets you live wherever you want?"

"I work for myself, actually."

"Ah, you're a business owner."

"Uh, yes," he confirmed. "A former business owner, I should say. I disbanded the company about a year ago."

"You sold your business," she clarified.

"I cashed out," he cautiously verified.

"So you're retired," she concluded with an approving smile. "You're quite young to be retired already. Congratulations."

"I'm very lucky."

"In my experience, luck can be _part_ of business," she countered, "but you can't run a successful one, one that allows you to retire at your age, based on luck alone."

"Very true," he conceded. "How do you know about business, Mariví, if you don't mind me asking?"

"My parents. They owned a local corner store, if you can believe it." Her eyes twinkled with the memory of a bygone era. "It was back before all the chains took over," she lowered her voice solemnly.

"Did you used to work in the store?" he guessed.

She beamed, then reached out and patted him on the arm. "Every single day. Before and after school. Back when I was just Paula's age."

"That certainly teaches you work ethic."

"Work ethic runs in our family," she confided. "It's not easy being a police officer you know. Much less being a woman in the force. And you know Raquel's not just a police officer..."

"Mom."

"...She's an inspector who leads cases. She runs entire teams of police officers..."

"Mom."

"...She's a psychologist too. Did she tell you that?" she asked rhetorically, eyebrows raised. "She's who they call when they need someone to negotiate a hostage crisis..."

"Mom," Raquel interrupted, "you don't need to list my credentials; it's embarrassing."

"I'm just proud of you," Mariví placated while patting Raquel's cheek. "And I want to make sure..." She looked back at him and squinted, as if trying to jog her memory. "...this fellow here..."

"Sergio!" Paula blurted with exasperation, reminding the adults she was below their lines of sight, listening with rapt attention. Raquel seemed to be suppressing a laugh by pressing her lips together; she smiled amusedly at him, eyes shining. He smiled back, hoping his eyes conveyed how thrilled and humbled he was to be here, getting to know the two most important people in her life.

"Sergio," Mariví repeated, nodding her head as if trying to lock it in. "Sergio, my memory isn't what it used to be. So please forgive me if I forget your name again."

"Not a problem," he assured her sincerely.

"I'm sure you can understand: I'm very proud of my daughter. I think the world of her. She's quite an amazing person."

"I completely agree," he emphatically affirmed. "You have every reason to think the world of her. She's an exceptional human being. One of a kind." The room spun just thinking about how privileged he was to have the opportunity to love her. "Her decisiveness and empathy and intelligence and grit—she's a powerful force for good. Unstoppable."

"See?" Mariví prodded Raquel playfully. "He gets it."

"Okay, now I'm really getting annoyed at the two of you," Raquel said with mock sternness, her slight smile revealing her underlying love for them both; she turned her glare from Mariví to him and back again. Paula giggled with glee and leaned back heavily against Raquel, as if her eight-year-old spine couldn't hold her body up anymore. Without needing to look down, Raquel ran her fingers gently through her daughter's hair.

"Okay, dear, we'll stop embarrassing you." Mariví raised her hands in surrender, then looked pointedly at him. "We'll sing Raquel's praises later. When we're talking one-on-one."

"It's a deal."

"So finish telling me about you then," Mariví resumed her inquiry, her curious eyes locked on his. "What was this business of yours? What did you do?"

Raquel looked at him warily; he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "Well..." He swallowed. "It was quite boring, actually. I mean, not to me," he qualified, pushing his glasses up his nose, "but to everyone else, I'm sure."

"Oh? Now that makes me even more curious. Now you have to tell me. What was it?"

He cleared his throat. "Logistics."

"Logistics," Mariví restated.

Raquel bit her lip and shut her eyes, probably to keep from laughing.

"What's _logistics_?" Paula asked.

"Moving things from point A to point B," he elaborated with an accompanying hand gesture, "with many steps in between."

"I doubt that's an easy business," Mariví mulled. "It's probably a lot of calculations and planning. You must be smart to have done it well."

"He is," Raquel cut in. "He's brilliant, in fact." He opened his mouth to object. She held her finger up to him and raised her forehead. "If you two get to talk about me, I get to brag about you." He angled his head to one side, acquiescing to her logic. Raquel turned to her mom. "Sergio was the best in Spain, and probably the whole world, in his line of work. He's a strategic genius. If the logistics business was a chess game, he'd be a grandmaster."

He felt flush hearing Raquel talk about him with such bold, unabashed sentiment. He'd never cared what other people thought of his intelligence or skill; for him, knowing his own strengths and limitations was satisfying enough. This sensation was brand new to him; his whole body felt hot. _Raquel thought he was brilliant—a strategic genius, even._ He wanted nothing more than to live up to her expectations and keep impressing her. He tried to rationalize this sudden compulsion, hypothesizing that it was evolutionary pair-bonding at work, making him slavishly hooked on her impression of him, while the rest of the world's opinion still meant nothing.

"Are you okay, sweetheart?" Raquel checked. She reached out and pressed his upper arm with her hand. He nodded rapidly, reflexively, not wanting to embarrass himself, and in turn, her. She continued looking at him, patiently waiting for him to meet her gaze. He finally did and the pure affection emanating from her eyes grounded him instantly; he felt awash in her love. She rubbed his arm knowingly, assuringly, then let her hand drop.

"Hmm," Mariví mused, nodding to herself, either unaware of his momentary faintness, or kindly helping him save face. "The newly retired head of a world class logistics company has captivated the attention of my daughter. That makes much more sense than Raquel falling for a beach bum. Not that I would have objected to a beach bum if one had made her happy," Mariví clarified, resuming impish eye contact with him. "I just can't picture someone like that keeping her interest for long. She has a lot of drive, you know." She raised her eyebrows, as if checking to see how well he knew her daughter. "And you may have noticed that she moves very fast."

"Mom!" Raquel's eyes widened; she looked scandalized. Her hands froze—she'd been combing her fingers through Paula's hair.

Mariví chuckled good-naturedly and patted Raquel on the cheek. "I didn't mean in that way, dear. I mean in every way." Mariví turned back to him. "Her work, her studies, her cases. Raquel has always been impatient. Always go-go-go. Have you noticed that?"

"I admire it," he admitted earnestly, verbally answering Mariví, but looking deeply into Raquel's eyes. "I know I can be ponderous, and I'm probably more cautious than I need to be. To tell you the truth, I think we balance each other perfectly." Raquel's smile and eyes were soft and growing softer, as if her heart was melting as he spoke.

"That's a lovely sentiment," Mariví granted while he and Raquel stared at one another with blatant adoration. "Maybe that means you can crack the code I never could..."

Raquel seemed puzzled because she turned to look at her mother; he did the same.

"...I'm always telling Raquel to enjoy herself," Mariví expanded. "She should take a break. Slow down. Watch the sunset. She's so serious, my daughter." Mariví shook her head, then extended her hand towards Paula, pretending to tickle her. "Unlike this one, who just loves to giggle..." Paula erupted with peals of laughter that were louder than he expected. She squirmed out of her mom's arms and climbed onto the bed. Raquel turned to follow her, then sat on its edge and lightly tickled Paula's tummy as the eight year old giggled and wiggled, rolling around like a happy puppy, apparently frolicking in a familiar game.

Watching Raquel and Paula play, as Mariví looked dotingly on, made his heart so full, it hurt. He was honored—_and intimidated_—by the fact that Raquel was inviting him to audition for a small part in her incredible family. He didn't know his lines and he didn't know the blocking, but he desperately wanted to hit the mark and earn a supporting role. Raquel glanced up at him nervously. His heart clenched; he could tell she was about to raise the subject of not returning to Spain. He nodded once, trying to communicate that he was there for her and would support her, however he could.

"Well, you two..." Raquel began, looking up at Mariví while continuing to play with Paula, who was shrieking with laughter, high on her own joy. "Speaking of taking a break and enjoying ourselves, how would you feel about us staying here in the Philippines, to live?"

Paula stopped squealing and rolling around. She lay still. Her eyes moved steadily from her mom, to her grandma, to him, and then methodically repeated the cycle. Mariví blinked at Raquel, either processing the news or having slipped out of lucidity.

He found the silence disconcerting; he assumed Raquel did too.

"Paula, what do you think of the Philippines so far?" Raquel prompted further, still projecting an air of calm.

"I love it!" Paula shouted, leaping up to stand on the bed with her arms raised dramatically. She started jumping up and down on the mattress.

Raquel twisted where she sat to better see her bouncing daughter. "We just got here," Raquel remarked with amusement. "How do you know you love it?"

Paula stopped jumping and pointed her arm straight at him. "Because he's here." _His jaw dropped. _"And you get happy when you look at him," Paula chattered, bounding back over to her mom and clambering into her lap like a baby kangaroo returning to the safety and security of its pouch. "I like it when you're happy."

Raquel glanced up at him, her mouth agape, then looked back down at Paula. "That's sweet of you, my little monkey," she cooed, firmly wrapping her daughter in her arms, then loudly kissing Paula's forehead, over and over again. "Though it's important for _all_ of us to be happy here. Not just me."

"Here at this hotel?" Paula inquired with curiosity as Raquel cradled her and rubbed her back.

"With Sergio, actually," Raquel divulged, looking back up at him. 

With a start, he realized she'd given him a cue. "That's right," he spoke carefully. "You and your mom and grandma can come stay at my house, just a short walk away. It's a little bigger than a hotel room, and it's more homey."

"And as soon as we're well-rested from our travels," Raquel picked up seamlessly, "we'll all go house hunting together, so we can find a home that fits the four of us."

"House hunting!" Mariví erupted with surprise, then turned to him, eyes wide. "I told you my daughter moves fast."

He cough-laughed, releasing the tension in his chest, and was relieved to hear Mariví chortle, too.

"So what do you think, Mom?" Raquel asked, patting the edge of the bed.

Mariví strolled over and sat next to Raquel, then stroked the side of Paula's head as the little girl lay snuggly across her mother's lap.

_He felt like an interloper who'd stumbled upon an idyllic multigenerational tableaux. He wondered if he should look away or go away..._

Mariví gazed at Raquel sympathetically, then reached up and held Raquel's face between her hands. "I've always said I want you to be happy. So if this is what happiness looks like..."

"It is, Mom," Raquel asserted.

"Then I'm all for it." Mariví lifted her shoulders with amicable excitement, then smiled reassuringly and patted Raquel's knee. "It'll be fun. It extends the adventure the three of us are having..." Mariví suddenly turned her neck towards him. Raquel and Paula followed her gaze. _His mouth went dry as he became the focus of all three pairs of eyes. _"And he seems like a good addition to the team," Mariví mock-whispered to Raquel out of the side of her mouth. "He _is_ adorable."

Raquel grinned gorgeously at him, her glimmering eyes telling him she agreed. "Sergio is shy, Mom," Raquel mock-whispered back without taking her eyes off him. "Don't make him blush."

Mariví made no indication that she'd heard, and instead gestured at a nearby chair. "Sergio, come sit with us."

He nodded obligingly, then pulled the chair over. As he slowly sat down, he tried to come up with something to ask that would deflect attention. "We have an important team decision to make," he stated, looking from Mariví to Paula to Raquel.

Raquel raised her forehead with relaxed curiosity.

He swallowed, hoping his instincts could be trusted after all. "Do we want a house that faces the sunrise?" he asked, lifting one hand in the air, palm up. "Or the sunset?" He lifted his other hand, identically.

Raquel's eyes instantly glistened with such singular affection, his breath caught in his throat. He saw her chest heave and she pressed her lips together quickly, as if containing a wellspring of emotion. He felt the familiar sting of nascent tears behind his eyes. He forced himself to rip his gaze away from hers, fearing that he would lose his composure if he didn't.

He looked down at Paula who was still contentedly nestled in Raquel's lap. "Paula, you first," he invited. "What's your vote?"

"Sunset!" Paula announced confidently.

"I like that you're decisive," he encouraged. "You remind me of someone else I know." His eyes desperately wanted to flit up to Raquel, but he stopped himself from doing so; he didn't want to lose control of his emotions in front of her mother and daughter. "Mariví?" he prompted, turning to her.

"Sunset, of course. I'm past the time in my life when I need the sun to wake me for work," Mariví reasoned, then shrugged. "Besides, sunsets are more romantic. And I do love watching a good romance..." Her twinkling eyes danced from him to Raquel and back again. "I can always tell at the start of a film how I'm going to feel about the couple. Sometimes they cast people who look the part but just don't have the chemistry. Other times, they're so perfect for each other, everyone can see it and there's no point in hiding it."

Mariví stood up and kissed Raquel on the forehead, as if blessing her daughter with romantic good fortune. Raquel gaped at her mother, perhaps stunned by the prophetic invocation.

Mariví smoothed down her dress and looked down at him and Raquel, as if wondering why they hadn't stood up too. "Speaking of sunsets, shouldn't we get going before it gets dark?" she urged.

"Now I know where Raquel gets her _go-go-go_," he responded with a smile, leaping to his feet and putting his chair back in place. Paula giggled delightedly as she climbed off Raquel's lap and padded across the floor towards her open backpack. He marveled that the eight year old had recognized the conversational callback and had appreciated the humor; she was indeed a learning machine.

He felt Raquel's arms slipping around him from behind. Her hands slid under his upper arms and came to rest on his chest. He placed his hands atop hers, pulling her arms even tighter against him as Mariví and Paula bustled around the room, starting to pack their belongings. He turned his neck as much as he could so he could glance over his shoulder at her. She met his gaze with her eyebrows raised, then kissed the back of his shoulder. She broke into one of her irrepressible grins that bordered on joyful laughter, then turned her face and laid her cheek flat against his upper back, squeezing him firmly.

He sighed, then felt himself smile. He was profoundly humbled that she'd initiated this physical affection in front of her mother and daughter. A rare feeling of contentment washed over him, like an emotional muscle relaxant, flowing from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. He'd never been one of those people who seemed comfortable wherever they went; he was always out of place, out of his element, the perennial outsider. If he was being honest, he'd never actually felt like he _belonged_—anywhere or with anyone. Yet, as Mariví and Paula playfully teased one another—Paula tossing little patterned socks at her grandma and Mariví chasing her shrieking granddaughter around the room, and as Raquel continued gripping him from behind, as if filling up her energy tank before beginning the task of corralling her errant mother and daughter—he felt his heart stirring in a new and unfamiliar way. It felt like hope, a deep longing for something he didn't have but now knew he desperately wanted—something he didn't dare articulate.

And as much as he was relishing this time with Mariví and Paula, he was already looking forward to being home—_their home!_—cuddled up with Raquel in their tiny twin bed, whispering to one another, reflecting on the day by moonlight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I strive to be clear about who is speaking or taking an action, but I also try to keep the prose as streamlined as possible so you can feel the rhythm of the dialogue. 
> 
> So please let me know if there were any points you found confusing on the one hand, or too tediously descriptive on the other! I always appreciate specific feedback; it's so helpful in continuing to learn and improve, so thank you!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, friends! I really hope you find it worth it, because I know you've been waiting a long time!
> 
> Portions of this chapter are Mature/Explicit.

Sergio shook the base of the metal bed frame to see if his cardboard shim had worked. He smiled to himself; the bed didn't move.

He heard the door open behind him.

From his crouched position, he turned around and watched Raquel slip inside their makeshift bedroom and quietly close the door. _G__od he was in love with her._

She tilted her head and smiled at him with curiosity. _He'd missed her so much! _How was that even possible? They'd only been apart for twenty minutes, half an hour at most.

Earlier, as they'd stood face-to-face in the kitchen—him holding out two water glasses for Mariví and Paula, Raquel pouring the filtered water from the pitcher—she'd whispered that she wanted to spend some alone time tucking them in, making sure they felt settled and safe. So he'd bid goodnight and had busied himself making this room as cozy as possible: he'd shut off the ceiling light and moved the desk lamp to the floor beside the daybed, where it now cast a warm glow; he'd stacked the extra pillows on the desk chair, leaving one for them to share under the turned-down sheets. Most of his time had been spent attempting to anticipate and proactively prepare for scenarios in which their bed might move. He could think of few things more mortifying than Raquel's mother or daughter waking to the sound of a conspicuous rhythmic thump. Now, as Raquel looked at him inquisitively from across the little room, he wanted to ask how they were, if they had what they needed, if there was anything he could do. Instead, he was frozen on one knee, staring up at her, transfixed, reminded, once again, of how singularly beautiful she was.

His heart quickened as she walked soundlessly towards him. _Would she always have this effect on him? _He was mesmerized by each step as she placed her heel, then the ball of her foot, carefully on the wooden floor.

She came to a stop in front of him; his head was at the height of her stomach. He blinked up at her, feeling lovestruck all over again.  
  
"What are you doing?" she asked amusedly, her voice low, obviously not wanting to stir her mother and daughter who were likely drifting peacefully off to sleep in the main room. She reached down with both hands and touched his head with her fingertips. A jolt of electricity sped down his spine. She slowly ran her fingers from the front of his scalp to the back of his head, through his hair.

Tentatively, he reached out and placed his hands on the outside of her thighs. He gazed up into her twinkling encouraging eyes. He slid his palms upward, slipping them under her skirt so they came to rest on her hips. His thumbs gently traced the arcing hem of her panties. She was smiling down at him with such serenity, it took his breath away. She began kneading the back of his head, digging her fingers into his scalp with palpable desire.

He brought his face towards the lower edge of her shirt, and nudged the fabric up with his nose, exposing the exquisite skin of her stomach. He pressed his lips lightly against her belly, below her navel. She shivered between his hands, as if electricity was now ricocheting through her, too.

He pulled his lips away and looked up at her softly dilated eyes and blissfully curved lips. "I missed you," he confessed.

"Me too," she intoned reflectively, calmly massaging his head. "It was a long year."

"I meant that I missed you for the last twenty minutes," he clarified honestly, then cringed at how ridiculous he sounded, regretting that he'd said that aloud.

She broke into joyous laughter. Her eyes widened and she quickly lifted a hand to her mouth, biting her knuckle to stifle her laugh. Her other hand remained on the back of his neck, as if she didn't want to let go. Her eyes sparkled with affection as she gradually contained her mirth.

She dropped her hand from her mouth and ran her thumb along his cheek, soberly. _He relished the touch._ She peered probingly into his eyes, as if his pupils were a crystal ball that foretold the future. "Are we about to become that couple," she mused, "who never spends a day apart?"

"I hope so," he admitted, then swallowed nervously, feeling his heart in his throat. He started to stand, without breaking eye contact, keeping his hands securely on her hips. He noticed that she was staring longingly at his mouth as he rose. The moment he was upright, she asserted her grip on the back of his neck with both hands, and eagerly pulled herself up towards his face.

His eyes fell closed as the all-consuming tide of Raquel's lust washed over him. He opened his mouth amenably, welcoming her ravenous lips as she nipped lightly at his, then engulfed his mouth with hers. Her movements felt urgent, as if she was desperate to communicate—as if she was still trying to convince him that _she was with him_. Her entire body undulated against his, mimicking the last kiss they'd shared in Madrid when she was handcuffed and had beckoned him closer. He moved his hands off her hips to the small of her back, hoping to steady her as she feverishly ground into him; she seemed not to care whether or not she lost her balance.

"Sergio," she panted, her lips brushing his jaw as she spoke, as if she couldn't bring herself to separate her mouth from his skin, even to talk. "I can't stand seeing the fear in your eyes." He froze, wondering what she meant. "Your fear that I'm going to reject what you say. Your fear that I'm going to hurt you," she expounded, reading his mind, or more likely reading his stillness. "You don't have to _hope_ anymore." She grasped his cheeks between her hands; her trembling eyes bore up into him, imploring. "You can _know_. You can _trust_." Her sincerity penetrated his soul. "I fell in love with you, too."

_He choked on his own exhale. _His tears fell. _Where did they come from so suddenly? _He realized he was laughing and crying, simultaneously. _What a paradox! _At least he was a silent crier and quiet laugher so he wasn't disturbing Paula and Mariví through the wall. _That's right! She'd just moved her daughter and mother across the world into his house. There was nothing left to doubt. _

His face hurt from how wide he was grinning, yet warm droplets trickled down his cheeks. She rubbed them with her thumbs as they fell. He'd never felt so emotionally out of control. He would be existentially terrified, except that she was gazing up at him with such unwavering fondness, gripping his head with such solidity, making it clear his lack of composure was not only okay, she maybe even adored it. Despite his naysaying cautionary instinct, he realized that _he did trust_, _he did know_, that the past had passed and he would never again experience the soul-crushing horror of being violently rejected by the love of his life._  
_

He could feel her comforting lips on his beard and dimples, ardently kissing him again and again in rapid succession, on one side of his face, then the other, as if determined to banish his outdated fear, once and for all. His heart swelled with humility and gratitude at the undeniable, indescribable feeling of being the recipient of Raquel's love. "This morning, I didn't know if I'd ever see you again," he marveled, shaking his head. "And now..." He felt stupidly wordless.

"And now we're living together?" she completed his thought with a playful smirk, slipping her arms around his back. She squeezed him assuringly.

He nodded, thankful she'd said it so plainly that it left no room for interpretation or ambiguity.

"Maybe my mom was right," she whispered, conspiratorially. "Maybe I do move a little fast."

"You move at the perfect speed," he protested, tightening his arms around her to emphasize his certainty. He kissed the top of her head.

He watched her eyelids close restfully. She tucked her face up into the space between his shoulder and chin, burrowing against the side of his neck. He was unsure what this new and surprising act of nuzzling meant, but he could tell that it was intimate and right and that he wanted it every day for the rest of his life. He stroked the back of her head with increasing confidence, swaying where they stood, enjoying the sublimity of their embrace, hearing the gentle waves lapping against the shore, noticing through the window that the luminescent moon was peeking out from behind the clouds, streaming over the glistening ocean into their clandestine room.  
  
He sighed with contentment, acknowledging that every day from now on was likely to be full of learning and growth and surprising sensation, because, the truth was, everything about this was new. He'd only had three relationships in his entire life. When he was 23, there was Julia, the British university student who'd hired him to teach her conversational Spanish, and who, over the course of the summer, had managed to turn their lunch lessons into dates, without him even realizing it. As a normal well-adjusted sexually active 22 year old, she wanted to do more than hold hands at the cafe and kiss in the park, but for him, those new experiences were overwhelming enough, and he didn't have time to finish his research on sex before September rolled around and she returned to the UK. Four years later, at 27, there was Sonia, twelve-years his senior, the perceptive waitress at his favorite restaurant, who entertained herself on long shifts by flirting with him till he got flustered. She'd figured out he was a virgin and offered to introduce him to sex; after months, he finally accepted, saying he'd reached the precarious Pareto optimal point of anxiety, awkwardness, and age, and although she didn't know what he was talking about, she grabbed his hand, walked him across the street to her apartment, and, without shaming him, taught him about sex. She gave him feedback and encouragement over a dozen subsequent sessions, and then told him he'd _graduated_ and should go forth into the world. Of course, he hadn't, and, in fact, he moved from the city to a modest town, needing more space for his royal mint plans. Six years later, when his persistent new neighbor, Maribel, concocted daily excuses to knock on his door, literally pushing her way past him one night and climbing into his bed, he realized she saw her life as a poorly plotted romantic comedy, where he, the quiet neighbor, was the supposed man of her dreams. Although he humored her a few times, her impromptu invasions were dangerous, so he'd said goodbye and moved away, declining to leave a forwarding address.

He'd been the opposite of someone seeking a relationship; he'd decidedly prevented it and actively fled it. That's why meeting Raquel—during the heist, no less—was the most shocking experience of his life. He'd found himself helplessly unable to turn off the valve of his emotions; his feelings for her thundered beneath the surface, erupting through his crusty exterior like a geyser, natural and unmechanized, unpredictable, pure. It wasn't a pheromonal physical infatuation or a compulsion to caretake; it was the stabilizing pairing of electrons between atoms, covalently bonded beyond their control, causing him to believe in soulmates, despite the fact that, until then, he hadn't even believed in souls.

He caressed the nape of Raquel's neck with heightened fervor, keenly aware of the tenuousness of existence, flooded with gratitude that they'd happened to meet, hadn't ignored what they'd felt, and had both been willing to risk everything to be together. He noticed his inhales and exhales were falling in sync with hers; the steady expansion and contraction of her body in his arms grounded him like the resonant chime of a bell tower. He felt humbled, yet again, that he'd been granted this opportunity to love her. He wasn't yet ready to tell her that he'd never been in love before and that his entire sexual history could be summarized in a sentence; he wanted a chance to prove himself first. Disclosing his inexperience would only make his ineptitude more evident and would erode her confidence in this life she'd bravely chosen. Besides, he thought his naivety was so painfully obvious that as observant as she was, she'd recognize his ignorance. But earlier today, when they were ambling down the street after reuniting at the coordinates, she'd casually asked about the progression from _girlfriend_to _partner _in his past relationships; he'd changed the subject, redirecting her attention to the market tent. He was beginning to suspect that it was too hard to conceive that an adult of his age could be so unworldly romantically. His plan was to make up for his lack of experience with his voracious appetite to learn. He would dedicate himself to studying love and, whether she knew it or not, she would be his teacher and guide. He vowed to remember everything, to internalize every lesson, to work hard at becoming the partner she wanted, the partner she deserved, the partner she seemed to believe he could be.

His chest heaved raggedly as he choked back fresh tears. He was overcome with emotion, reveling in the feeling of her warm body in his arms, her forehead nestled against his neck, her measured exhales heating his collarbone where the top two buttons of his navy dress shirt were undone. He rubbed his cheek against the top of her head, savoring her soft hair against his skin and inhaling the smell of her scalp. He realized—_with a start_—that her unique scent was already becoming the familiar smell of solace. He shut his eyes, visualizing the butterflies in his stomach, envisioning himself anchoring in a judo stance and using his hands to gently channel his emotional energy: the butterflies fluttered in the desired direction, transmuting his crippling fear of imperfection into excitement for the challenge ahead.

She pulled her head out of the crook of his neck. He opened his eyes, missing her closeness. "Shall we lay down?" she whispered with a faint smile, then yawned, as if her body was readying for sleep at the mere mention of bed.

He nodded enthusiastically, then reflexively yawned in response. He felt his nervous system dialing down, too, suddenly bone tired. After all, it had been a special day.

Her smile was warm and relaxed as she stepped backwards out of his arms. She turned and strolled away, towards the desk on the other side of the room. As she walked, she casually pulled her shirt up and over her head. He watched her drape it over the back of the desk chair. Nothing about her movement was presentational or performative; that was _why_ he felt dumbstruck. _She seemed so at home, so domestically comfortable. He wanted to be that comfortable, too. _

He began unbuttoning his shirt, trying his best to not reveal his underlying anxiety, trying instead to emulate her laidback tranquility.

He watched her reach behind herself and deftly unhook her bra, then slip it off her shoulders. "Do you normally sleep naked?" she asked offhand, glancing back over her shoulder to meet his eyes briefly. Her strong upper back was bare; the warm light was giving it a golden-brown glow. She laid her bra on the chair back, too.

"Uh..." he stalled as he formulated his thoughts, finding her nonchalance arrestingly erotic. He tugged his dress shirt out of his pants and finished unbuttoning his lowest buttons. She was pulling down her skirt and underwear now, so that all at once, her remaining clothing had slid down her legs to the floor. He gaped at her naked backside as she placed her garments atop her other clothes. She gathered her hair between her hands and pulled it forward over her left shoulder, then ran her fingers through her hair methodically; perhaps removing the day's tangles was an evening ritual. He guessed her fingers were an improvisation in lieu of a brush, since the backpack she'd carried across the world with her mother and daughter's shared belongings was in the other room. "No, I don't typically sleep naked," he finally responded, worrying that was yet another way in which he was abnormal. He'd always lived alone so there was no reason to wear pajamas to bed; it was just what made him feel safe.

"But you'll indulge me?" she calmly confirmed as she turned around, still combing her fingers carefully through her hair.

"Of course," he blurted, short of breath from the bare sight of her. He admired her self-assurance and wished he had a similar ease.

He tried to mimic her confidence as he stepped in her direction and shrugged out of his shirt sleeves, one by one. She smiled sweetly as he pulled his shirt off, then leaned to one side as he neared. He folded his shirt neatly over the chair back, his heart thudding at the intimate tableaux of his clothes laying upon hers.

She strained up on her toes, placing her palm on the back of his shoulder for balance. She tenderly grazed his cheek with her lips. The homey familiarity of her kiss melted his heart and hardened his cock. He swallowed, then looked back over his shoulder as she strolled off towards bed, pushing her hair behind her, apparently having smoothed it to satisfaction.

He reminded himself to keep undressing, grateful he was facing away from her as he unzipped his pants and tugged them off. Maybe one day, with practice, he'd be self-possessed like her; but now, he felt anticipatory self-consciousness, afraid to walk in the nude across the room towards her while she had nothing to do but watch. He slowly folded his slacks over the back of the chair, then glanced furtively over his shoulder to see if she was staring at him.

She was sitting on the mattress's edge, gazing around the room, as if noticing it for the first time. "You made it cozy in here," she praised.

"It'll be even nicer in the moonlight," he remarked, leaping at the opportunity to hide, while attempting to sound blasé. "You can turn off the light if you want."

"Good idea," she agreed. He heard the lamp flick off as the light disappeared from the room. He silently sighed, already feeling more comfortable under the shroud of darkness. He quickly pulled down his boxers and tossed them on the chair.

He turned around and scurried her way, trying not to look hurried. As he neared, he could see her unpretentious splendor in the moon glow. Her eyes shimmered as their eyes met, and he realized she could see him too. He smiled back, feeling shy, wondering what, specifically, he was nervous about. She'd of course seen him nude before, earlier today in fact, but somehow, the act of strolling around unclothed made him feel especially vulnerable. He didn't want to give her any reason to doubt her life-altering decision. Standing before her, fully naked, he felt completely exposed, seen for all he was and all he wasn't. He desperately hoped he was worth it.

"What's your preferred side of the bed?" she asked with ease, reaching up and lightly holding his hand as he arrived in front of her.

His mind whirred as he processed what she meant: couples had their habits, including who slept on which side. But he'd never shared a bed with a partner before; he didn't know whether he preferred left or right. There were countless reasons why the night he'd spent with her in Madrid was the best night of his life, but one of them was the domestic intimacy of falling asleep and waking up, side-by-side. He'd known then what he knew now: that he wanted to wake up beside her, every day for the rest of his life.

"Dear?" she prompted again, pressing his hand.

"No preference," he replied, too abruptly.

She tilted her head and smiled knowingly. As precise as he was about everything, he doubted that _no preference_ seemed plausible. Her gentle eyes glinted, perhaps assuming he was deferring so she could choose. "In that case, I'll be on the outside, so I can hop up if Paula has a nightmare or Mom has an episode." She stood, apparently so he could climb into bed first.

He didn't move, and instead stroked her hand. "I'm pretty sure I'll wake up if you get out of bed, but if I don't, please wake me," he requested. She raised her eyebrows to confirm that he knew what he was signing up for. "I'm here for you, Raquel," he insisted. "I'll always want to help you, whatever that means."

Her smile and eyes softened, accentuated by the smoothing filter of the waxing moon. She slid her arms around him, pulling her bare skin against his. She pressed her forehead against his sternum; he felt her warm breath on his chest, her strong hands on his upper back, her curved breasts and belly compressing against the front of his body, as if she couldn't bear for air to come between them. Every place their skin touched felt abuzz with excitement, and alive with the promise of safety. He enveloped her in his arms, discovering that every hug they'd previously shared—where even a bit of fabric had separated them—was a poor simulacrum of this naked purity. The raw fierceness and tender vulnerability in her embrace was the same duality that he felt in his heart, too. Their bare hold of one another was like a mutual oath of protection.

She released her grip and stepped back—fingers lingering against his stomach as long as possible—evidently making space for him to get into bed.

He took her cue and crawled onto the mattress, then slipped between the cool cotton sheets. He turned onto his side, his back to the wall, trying to create as much space for her as possible. He laid his head upon the pillow and immediately felt his frames smoosh the side of his face. "I forgot my glasses," he uttered with amazement, shocked at his own carelessness. He sat up quickly, feeling silly. He couldn't recall ever forgetting to take off his glasses; it was almost as instinctive as breathing.

"I'll take them for you," she offered kindly, holding her hand out where she stood.

He hesitated, overcome by childhood instinct. He'd never handed his glasses to anyone. As a kid, they were his prized possession. They were too expensive for his dad's meager budget, so for years, Sergio had gone without, even though it was clear he couldn't see. He got used to squinting across the hospital ward, honing his ability to analyze stature and posture and gait, since he couldn't make out visual detail until a nurse or doctor stepped close. Once his dad got him his first pair, he'd worn them for years, long after he'd needed new ones—long after his dad had died.

Now, as an adult with access to money, there was no rational reason to fret over his current pair. They were like a totem, emblematic of his observational powers, representative of his lens on the world.

"What's wrong?" Raquel asked gently as she slowly sat on the edge of the bed, bending one leg so she could face him.

"Nothing," he quipped reflexively.

He felt her touch the back of his hand. He looked down at the mattress, at her hand atop his, and in a flash he saw the table at the Hanoi, when she'd reached out for the first time. She could've easily shrugged that day and claimed that everything was fine with her daughter, but instead, she'd told the truth. She'd bravely shared about her fears and ex-husband's abuse, even though she didn't know how he would respond. Her choice to reveal her soul was what catalyzed their relationship. If she hadn't courageously shared, would their conversation have deepened? Would they have spent time together, gotten to know one another? Would they have fallen in love?

He looked up into her eyes: they shone with compassion and patience, and a pledge of acceptance.

He didn't want to close down; he wanted to stay open, like her. Maybe that's what it meant to be in a partnership: _letting yourself be a fool in front of the only person in the world you want to impress, sharing the truths you never thought you'd share with anyone._ He felt his toes on the edge of a precipice; he knew he'd have to leap, face first, and allow the wind to fill his lungs as he tumbled through the air of his own memories, trusting he'd be caught at the bottom. He felt Raquel firmly squeeze the back of his hand, as if to let him know she'd be waiting, arms outstretched, at the base of the ravine.

"I remember my dad's broad grin when he gave me my first pair of glasses..." he reminisced, letting his eyes drift away from her, down to his lap. He noticed he was sitting in bed, a white sheet covering his legs, just like he'd been sitting that day, thirty years ago. "He presented them to me on a hospital pillow, as if he was handing me the keys to the kingdom. I picked them up, gingerly, like I was handling a rare treasure. I knew he'd probably starved himself for months to get them for me; I could feel my heart beating so fast, it hurt. Before I slipped them on, he proudly explained that he'd gotten them several sizes too big for my face. _T__hey'll last longer this way_. _You'll grow into them..._" He filled his lungs, suddenly overwhelmed with empathy for his nine year old self.

"...From the moment I put them on, I could see it all: the cracks in the plaster on the hospital ward wall, the hands on the clock that hung over the doors my dad burst through each day, the pity in the eyes of the approaching nurses before they'd reach my bedside and don their cheery masks. I also saw the flaw in my dad's plan..." He shook his head at the variable his dad hadn't anticipated. "...I thought of it instantly but couldn't bring myself to tell him. It was true that as a child who didn't run or climb or even walk, I was able to keep my glasses propped on my face as I lay in bed, as long as I constantly pushed them up my nose. But eyesight, especially at that age, isn't stable. So as my head grew into the frames, my vision became more blurry. I never told Dad his plan had failed."

He felt Raquel caressing the back of his hand. He tucked his neck and continued his nostalgic free fall. "I wore those glasses for years, until my brother could afford to get me new ones. Andrés wheeled me outside of the hospital that glorious autumn afternoon, and for the first time, I could see the leaves on the trees, the contours of the clouds, the individual blades of grass. The world was more intricately beautiful than I'd known; I was in awe." He heard Raquel's breathing hitch, as if holding back tears. He quickly lifted his head and met her gaze.

Her eyes were glassy in the lunar glow; he felt his eyes sting, too. Reaching up with his free hand, he slipped his frames off his face, then held them out to Raquel with what he hoped was an assuring smile. He'd bared his soul; he'd shared his story. With a deep breath, he noted that he'd already entrusted her with his life. 

She delicately received his glasses with both hands, pinching the arms between her fingers without touching the lenses. "I'll put them on the desk, unfolded, with the top edge of the frames down?" she attentively confirmed.

"Actually..." He was stunned that she'd noticed and remembered exactly how he liked to set down his glasses. "Yes, just like that, please."

She tilted her head at him and smiled softly, as if responding to his surprise by wordlessly saying, _w__hy wouldn't I notice and remember something about you? _

He nodded back, feeling warm on his cheeks at the implication that she paid attention to him because she cared about him.

She stood up, gracefully, and walked away across the room towards the desk, growing fuzzier with every step. He lay down on his side as she made her way back. The nearer she got, the clearer she got, and the faster his heart raced. He pulled back the sheet to welcome her and she slid into bed beside him, nestling between the sheets, then resting her head on the pillow so they were face to face. Her eyes glimmered in the moonlight, emanating with affection. She brought her hands up and clasped his hands where they lay between their chests.

"My heart breaks for your child self," she whispered solemnly. She lifted her left hand and ran her fingers along his cheek. "I think about Paula and how impressionable she is right now." Her hand paused, her splayed fingers resting against the side of his face. Understandably, contemplating her daughter seemed to take all her focus. "She'll remember this day: what she saw, what she heard. The next several weeks of you integrating into her life will have a lasting impact, in ways we can't even anticipate..." She blinked rapidly, perhaps clearing her mind of the temptation to try to control the future—a desire he recognized all too well. She smiled weakly; her fingers resumed stroking his cheek. "...just as all your childhood experiences impacted you." She moved her hand down to his chest, and flattened her palm against it. He put his hand on the back of hers, asking her, without speaking, to keep healing his heart and never let go. "I find myself wanting to protect _past you_," she mused, "in addition to _present you_ and _future you_."

"I know exactly what you mean," he whispered back with conviction, then swallowed. He parted his lips slightly, hoping that evoking the pain of his past hadn't reduced her ardor in the present.

Perhaps reading his parted lips and his concern, she scooted closer on the pillow and lightly brushed his lips with hers. _Her tender touch__ felt divine._ She pulled back and looked into his eyes, as if checking to make sure he felt reassured.

Joy and gratitude washed over him; he felt himself smile so broadly his dimples likely emerged. She broke into a ravishing smile in return, her eyes sparkling with content and delight.

Feeling both bashful and emboldened beneath her gaze, he removed a hand from between them and wrapped his arm around her back, spreading his palm against her spine, drawing them closer, convinced he was in heaven. A flood of arousal palpably flowed through her as his hand caressed her lower back—he watched her eyelids fluttering shut and her lips separating. He promptly met her request by leaning forward and grazing her lips with his.

He leaned back to see what she wanted next. Her eyes remained softly closed. Her forehead and cheeks and jaw were slack, loosened by the relaxant of lust. Her trembling lips were parted with breathy longing. He immediately obliged with another kiss, unable to withhold anything from her, ever. The gentle touch of his lips must have served as kindling for her fire because her hot shallow exhales heated his chin as her open mouth hovered millimeters from his.

He took a deep breath and his own eyes fell shut as he opened his mouth, as an offering, and leaned forward, giving his lips to her fully. _Bliss washed over him as their open mouths met. _His cock hardened, instantly.

He cautiously extended his tongue. She immediately captured it and sucked it intensely. His cock surged in response, his sensitive tip skimming up her thigh as it rapidly rose. The side of his member thumped imprecisely against her abdomen, each momentary glance causing his breath to hitch and his cock to swell. _Oh, Raquel! _She was grinding her mound against the side of his shaft now; he could feel the fine hair of her bush and the folds around her clit, pressing powerfully against him. He whimpered into her mouth as her lips consumed his with an equally gluttonous voracity.

He felt her muscular leg slide up and over his hip, drawing his cock and her cunt even closer. _He'd never experienced anything sexier. _His hand shot down to the curve of her ass and he indulgently grasped her sumptuous cheek. He slid his grip along the intoxicating length of her thigh, squeezing every inch of her. He heard her guttural hums urging him on, expressing her unquenched thirst as she adjusted the angle of her hips. _Oh, oh, Raquel!_ The side of his cock was suddenly in contact with her shockingly wet slit. She'd perfectly positioned her opening so that her moist outer lips could rub all the way up his rigid member. His spasming cock was only kept in place because of the magnificent pressure she exerted against him. He felt her hand on the top of his shoulder, then the back of his neck, then the side of his face, then on his shoulder again as she firmly pulled the warm folds of her cunt up along his length, again and again and again and again. It didn't matter that he wasn't inside her: he knew he would easily come this way if he didn't carefully curb his orgasm.

He felt himself grinning like an idiot into her wolfish kiss as she masterfully orchestrated this dance, her mouth mirroring the fervor of her hungry clit, unapologetically pleasuring herself against his iron shaft. Every time she glided powerfully up the side of his cock, she skyrocketed him higher, through planes of stimulation he didn't know were possible, establishing new cruising altitudes of arousal, new standards of tumidity. _Raquel, my love. _He returned his palm to the curve of her spine, enamored by her always stunning undulations. He suddenly realized that when they were standing fully clothed and she ground into him as they kissed, she was alluding to this act. He would never experience those kisses the same way again: he'd forever imagine that she was insanely wet and wanting desperately to rub her slit along the length of his shaft.

Her mouth separated from his and it seemed as if she was holding her breath—she tilted her slit against the tip of his cock. _She was trying to guide him inside. _His cock twitched with excitement, so slick from her juices that it slid away from her opening. _Should he hold the base of his cock steady or did she want to do it?_

"I meant to tell you..." she murmured, sounding breathless, probably from interrupting her own climactic arc. He opened his eyes and his breath caught at the sensual thrill of seeing her profoundly aroused—her jaw slightly open, her eyes gently closed—she was in reciprocal rapture, a visual reflection of how he felt. He moved his hand back to her powerful thigh, massaging her provocatively with the full force of his grip, feeling her spread herself even wider by lifting her hip even higher over his. He craved being buried inside her—deeply, completely—_his frenzied cock throbbed with longing, aching to feel her compress around him_. "...I have an IUD, so you don't have to worry."

"I wasn't worried," he admitted.

She muffled a gorgeous giggle, then opened her eyes and looked into his, her irises twinkling. "I'm not even going to ask you why not," she teased quietly, rubbing the top of his shoulder as she stifled her laugh. "Not right now anyway."

He smiled bashfully, relieved he didn't have to explain himself because he wouldn't have known what to say. If her giggles were any indication, she seemed to understand his subconscious better than he did. _Why hadn't he been worried? _He was a person who anticipated everything. Was he just so inexperienced that he hadn't realized it was necessary to discuss contraception with your partner? No, that wasn't it. In fact, he'd been hyper-vigilant and obsessively precautionary with the two previous people with whom he'd had sex. Was he just so devastatingly in love with Raquel that his frontal lobe lost control and his executive functioning went haywire when he was around her? Well, yes; but, no, that didn't explain it all. _The simple truth suddenly hit him._ He completely trusted that Raquel would manage and communicate her body's needs, contraceptive or otherwise, but moreover_—he queasily acknowledged—_as irrational and impractical as it sounded, he would've welcomed the possibility of having a baby with her.

"Sergio," she whispered adoringly, moving her hand from his shoulder to the side of his face. He only now realized that his eyes had become unfocused; her penetrating pupils recaptured his gaze. "I had all my STI tests done after we were together, just to be safe. Everything came out great." She lifted her forehead and opened her mouth theatrically, as if a secret she wanted to share had just occurred to her. "You must admit, for two adults over forty who spent our professional lives mitigating risks, we were shockingly irresponsible back in Madrid." She laughed beautifully, her tone hushed. He chuckled too, not wanting to repress his laughter when she evidently intended for the humor to be shared.

She settled into a dazzling rakish grin and waited with eyebrows raised, obviously expecting him to verbally reciprocate with a confirmation of his sexual health. The back of his neck grew warm._ He didn't have anything bad to report, he just wasn't practiced at having this conversation!_

Her eyes were empathetic; she smiled dotingly. "I know most people abhor these discussions," she confided in an undertone, followed by the cutest shrug he'd ever seen. "But it's best to be direct, don't you think?" She lifted her chin and grazed his lips_—hers were still titillatingly moist from their recent kiss._ His cock pulsated, thumping unbidden against her deliciously wet slit. He watched her eyelids spasmodically flutter. "Besides..." she murmured huskily against his mouth, her steamy breath heightening his yearning to taste her—_all of her_—again. "...I find it hot to talk about with you, since it signifies trust."

He nodded admiringly, inspired by her, as always. He cleared his throat, then immediately wished he hadn't. It created a dramatic pause—a pause which was now elongating, a pause which was becoming more and more charged with unspecified tension, making it seem like he had something to say, when instead, he had nothing to say, or rather, nothing concerning to say. _Gah! H__e was such a moron at this! Why couldn't he just exude calm confidence? _"All my tests were perfectly clean, too," he verified crisply, rushing the words out, emphasizing his point by lifting his hand and making a definitive horizontal slicing gesture, even though she couldn't see it.

Thankfully, despite his needlessly awkward delivery, she seemed to know he was telling the truth because her eyes were wide with amusement and affection as she slipped her hand under his arm, and slid her palm firmly against his upper back. She pulled herself tightly against him, the fronts of their bodies trembling with salacious skin contact, his hardness and her wetness an unmistakable part of the shared reality between them. He reciprocated by redoubling his grip on her thigh; she hiked it up even more, causing his jaw to open and his breath to hitch, the sight of which led her to gasp, in turn.

She seemed more than ready to move on from their conversation, but he respected her directness and wanted to practice it, too. "I had my tests done after the last person I was with, before you and I were together," he whispered, without mentioning that was seven years ago. He cleared his throat, but this time the dramatic emphasis was intentional. "So _I knew_ I was perfectly clean in Madrid. I wouldn't have exposed you to risk, Raquel," he asserted seriously, looking into her ardent eyes. "And to be clear: I haven't been with anyone else since you and I met."

A uniquely beautiful—_almost shy_—smile erupted on her face. Her adorable teeth on the left side of her mouth were only visible when she grinned this rare way. "Even though I hoped that was the case..." she quietly admitted, gazing into his eyes with relaxed delight and a tiny hint of timidity, her pupils vibrating, vulnerably. "It feels good to hear you confirm it. Thank you for waiting for me—in every way."

Her lips moved towards him; he parted his lips eagerly. She kept her mouth a millimeter away from his, her sultry exhales unconscionably erotic. _His lips, his cock, his heart, his soul...every part of him longed for her touch! _She focused his attention on her steady, earnest eyes. "I waited for you, too," she solemnly whispered. Her words reverberated through his soul just as his words must have stirred her. He made his first entry in his mental notebook on love: _L__esson one. D__espite being afraid, share honestly and directly. It will always be worth it, just in ways you may not expect._

She closed the minuscule distance between them, mashing her lips against his.

His eyes fell shut at the overpowering sensation; his undirected cock surged against her abdomen in a chaotic frenzy of desire.

Her mouth was ravenous, as if it had been a year, not a minute, since last they'd kissed. She thrust her pelvis against him, capturing and containing the frenetic movements of his uncontrolled cock by grinding her wet cunt against it. He felt her hand slip down between their sweaty stomachs. _Oh, __Raquel! _She grabbed the base of his shaft and steadied it, then pressed his sensitive tip against her slick opening—_he gasped, she moaned_—she slid her gloriously tight cunt onto his pulsing swollen cock. _He hadn't believed in heaven until now. _

He thrust his hips towards her as he felt her do the same; he slipped farther into her, deeper than seemed possible; she compressed around him—_so slick yet so tight_—he wanted to stay inside her forever.

"Raquel, my love," he chanted aloud without meaning to, immediately remembering they needed to keep their voices down. His mouth sightlessly found hers so they could both muffle their sound; while their tongues danced and their mouths devoured one another's, the angle of their hips prevented maximum penetration, so without needing to speak, their _mmming_ mouths separated after a final luxuriant kiss, and he felt her adjust her height relative to his frame in just the way that would help them reach the depth they both craved.

Now at this new angle they pulled their hips back and thrust forward again—_Oh, yes!_—he bit the inside of his cheek to remind himself not to cry out. _Oh, Raquel! _They thrust against one another sensually, synchronously, no one person leading, no one person following, both attuned to one another, reflexively finding their rhythm. Like a perfect duet, they pounded in time, the tempo rising and falling, ever evolving, him gripping her thigh, now the curve of her ass, her gripping his back, now the side of his neck, over and over and over again. _Oh, Raquel! Oh, Raquel! Oh, Raquel, my love!_

"Can I ride you?" she intoned as she clutched the top of his shoulder and thrust against him as far as she could go. He opened his eyes to her gorgeously glimmering irises and softly amorous gaze.

He nodded eagerly, then laid back so his shoulders were flat on the bed. He scooted himself under her, towards the middle of their narrow mattress as she extended her left leg. She rotated her hips and waist and shoulders and head over him, planting her left knee in the space he'd just created, planting her right knee on his other side—_she was fully astride_. He felt her palms against his abs as she secured her mount.

She straightened her spine. She shook her head to push her sweaty hair out of her face.

Towering over him, it had never been more obvious that she was a deity. The moon was at the ideal angle to set off every curve; she was aglow with lunar light and her own sexual power.

She seemed to get the gist of what he was thinking because she broke into a devastating roguish grin; he felt himself smile in return.

He placed his hands on her hips as she elevated up, just a tad, then glided back down, like she was checking for angle or fit. She adjusted her knees, then rotated her hips lower and lower, as low as they could go, apparently making sure she could bury him as deep inside her as she wanted. _His cock spasmed—he quietly whimpered_. The sensation of his entire length being consumed by her tight cunt was mind-blowing, life-changing. His ecstasy must have been evident because she moved her hands off his abs to the mattress on either side of him, then used her strong shoulders to lower her face towards him. She pressed her hungry open mouth against his, intensely but briefly, then moved her lips to his ear. "You're so fucking beautiful," she whispered, then nipped his ear and sucked his lobe.

"You are too," he incanted quietly as she quickly and impressively pulled herself upright again.

She gently caressed his abs with her thumbs, then, all of a sudden, he felt her gliding towards the end of his shaft as she brawnily pushed herself up with her thighs—_oh, Raquel!_ He knew what was coming next, so he squeezed the sides of her hips and bit his lower lip to prevent himself from loudly calling her name. She compressed around him, more strongly than ever, then plunged herself down, lightning fast. He disappeared inside her impossibly wet, improbably tight, immutably breathtaking cunt. _He throbbed_.

Delirious with pleasure, his eyelids fluttered shut, and he sunk into the incredible feeling of her rhythmic ride. Her hips undulated artfully between his hands in a rolling ode to blissful infinity. He could hear the night waves on the beach, and imagined the ocean was adjusting its tempo to the curling swell of her spine, as dedicated as he was to joining her orgasmic tide.

He wanted, somehow, to give her more; just the thought of it caused his cock to surge. He heard her muffle a moan, which further supported his axiom. Since he was so inexperienced, instead of drawing from past knowledge, his guiding principle when it came to sex with Raquel was to lean into his desire to give. If the indicator of success was her orgasms and attestations, both earlier today and in Madrid, his approach seemed to work: he listened and observed and asked when he wasn't sure, and gave, and gave, and welcomed his own pleasure when it came.

Now he opened his eyes and his cock pulsated at the sapphic sight of her astride him in the moonlight. As she majestically rode him, her eyes were blissfully closed in ecstatic repose. With each rise of her hips and euphoric glide down, she compressed around his cock like she was decadently enjoying every moment, every movement, sumptuously feasting while feeding him too.

He moved his hand from her hip down towards her clit. He gently pressed his thumb on her nub, causing her mouth to fall open and remain open, in rapture. Her chin trembled as she tried to hold in her sound—a breathy whimper escaped her lips. He stroked her with delicate precision, attentively noticing every quivering reaction, every shudder of her spine. He tested lines and circles and infinity signs as he watched her movement, and listened to her breath, and felt her cunt spasm around him, then contract and compress. He felt like he was improvising an evocative musical score with stunning thrills and subtle arcs of satisfaction, attuning himself to the rhapsodic direction of the entranced conductor who was sightlessly channeling the muse of her desire.

All at once, she threw herself forward, planting her palms astride his chest and hovering her head over his. She blinked open her enchanting enamored eyes. "You're gonna make me come," she breathlessly warned.

"Yes, that's the point." He laughed quietly as he stroked the sides of her thighs, adoringly.

"I mean we should come together," she incanted, eyelids heavy, chest still heaving.

"I'm ready anytime," he confessed, his engorged cock pulsing excitedly inside her, as if making its agreement known.

The left side of her mouth turned upward and her eyes fell closed as her cunt pulsed back in response. She elevated her head and straightened her spine. He could feel her gorgeous ferocious muscles beneath the palms of his hands as she lifted herself up and slammed herself down, then did it again, then again with increasing speed, her open jaw locked, clearly concentrating on containing her carnal urge to scream. _His swollen cock began to quake beyond his control. __Oh, Raquel! _

He shot his hand up between her legs and massaged her clit urgently, fervently, at the same time that he rammed his cock up, meeting her need. He felt her contracting around his shaft in a rapid series of syncopated spasms, beyond what was possible to consciously control.

"Raquel," he cried out, his volume minimized, his feelings amplified, his cock erupting, exploding. 

_T__heir rarified love was a chain reaction of expansions and contractions._

His orgasmic pulses ended; hers slowed, then stopped.

He heard himself panting—or maybe it was her labored breathing.

She fell forward onto him, collapsing against his chest. He immediately ran his hands up and down her sweaty back, wishing he could hold her here forever, supporting her as she luxuriated in the euphoria and drifted off sleep on this purest of highs.

"Sergio," she breathily uttered his name against his ribcage like an invocation, somehow knowing his soul wanted to hear it, longed to hear it, to substantiate that all of this was real, that he was a singular person whom she loved, and tonight he would fall asleep, in her arms, as _Sergio_, and wake up, in her arms, as _Sergio_. 

As if hearing his thoughts, she rolled off of him onto her side, returning to her edge of their little bed as his soaked cock slipped out of her, soft and relaxed. She kept her leg and hand over him; he kept his shoulder under her head and his arm around her back. He could feel her smiling against his chest, perhaps as delighted as he was to notice how well they fit, just like this. Her lips idly kissed his chest; he tilted his neck to kiss the top of her head. _He yawned._ He felt her yawn too, her warm breath always welcome against his skin.

The rhythmic waves gently broke against the otherwise quiet beach. The moon glow continued offering just enough shimmering light to keep them visible to one another.

As he reached down to pull the sheet up and over them, he reflected that today had been the best day of his life and he had every reason to believe that tomorrow would be the new best day of his life. He wanted it to go on like that. He trusted it would go on like that. Raquel nestled against him, snug beneath the sheet, her breathing betraying that she was already one step into sleep.

He'd wanted this for so long—since the night in his decoy hangar when he'd asked her to stay. He'd wanted to spend the night with her, not just make love, but fall asleep and wake up beside her. And now, despite the improbable incalculable odds, here they were. But this wasn't a stolen night in the midst of a chaotic heist; this was the beginning of their new life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think, including about the chapter's length. Many of you have shared that you enjoy staying immersed in the world for longer chunks at a time, so I tried to give you another meaty chapter to luxuriate in. I hope the wait was worth it. <3 <3 <3
> 
> I'll also be curious to hear your opinions about the interwoven substantive topics: the childhood story, the relationship history, and even the conversation about safe sex. I know it's unusual to include these types of realistic discussions in art and media, so if you had feelings one way or the other, please do share your feedback. I truly want to know!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here you go, friends! This is the longest chapter yet. I hope you enjoy it. *paces nervously* As always, I look forward to your feedback!

_Raquel was in the ocean; Sergio was with her. They clutched one another intensely, adjusting their grips every few seconds. She felt his passionate lips moving urgently against hers; she tasted the salt on his mouth. The waves were rolling over them, but instead of feeling danger, all she felt was safety, because together, they could survive anything; they could pull each other up out of the sea; they could thrive. _

She realized she was dreaming—she could feel the hazy wisps of reality at the edges of her senses; but she liked this dream! It was comfortable and warm. _She heard Paula's cheery giggle echoing through the air; Paula sounded nearby yet far away_. _Was she here on the beach? Raquel lifted her head up out of the water to look around and find Paula._ No, wait: there was no water. She felt herself laying on her side on a comfortable, warm bed with her head on a pillow, and she knew Paula was in the next room, a wall dampening her high-pitched laughter. She noticed sounds from the dreamscape still lingered: gentle waves rhythmically lapping against the shore, quarreling seabirds making a racket as if fighting over mollusks left behind by a low tide.

She blinked open her eyes and saw the harsh midmorning light glinting off Sergio's back. She felt herself smile uncontrollably, flooded with gratitude as the stunning events of yesterday washed over her in a breathtaking tidal wave of emotion. _She'd found Sergio at the coordinates. He'd waited for her, in every way. They'd spent the afternoon together: making love, talking, napping in each other's arms. She'd reintroduced him to Paula and her mom; she'd let them know that Palawan was their new home. They'd moved in to Sergio's bungalow and made plans for the four of them to house hunt together. She'd fallen asleep, postcoitally, to the sounds of the ocean—the same sounds that she heard right now._

She wouldn't believe any of this was real, except that her hand was resting languidly on the toasty skin of Sergio's hip, and she felt his butt tucked snuggly against her thighs. She watched, from behind, as the side of his ribcage slowly and steadily rose and fell. She enjoyed this feeling of him nestled into her, just as yesterday she'd nestled into him. Their symbiosis was evident in everything they did. Her grin deepened as she realized they must have arranged themselves in this position while asleep. Despite the narrow mattress, the unfamiliarity of a new place, and sharing a bed with someone she'd only spent the night beside once, she'd apparently slept without stirring, utterly cozy and completely secure. It was uncanny, really, to feel this settled, this pair-bonded already. But she did. And she knew he did too.

The brightness of the sunlight and the caws of the warring birds told her it was well past dawn. As comfy as she was with her lap curved around his rear, her nipples brushing his back, her eyes entranced by the hair on the nape of his neck as it quivered beneath her breath—she needed to check on her mom and Paula. It had gotten disconcertingly quiet in the next room.

She slowly lifted her hand off Sergio's hip and scooted back, just a tad, careful not to wake him.

His long arm suddenly reached back, his broad hand deftly finding and cupping her ass. He pulled her gently back towards him.

She snickered with surprise and delight, gladly pulling herself forward again, sliding her arm under his, slipping her palm around to his stomach. She compressed her hips and belly and breasts against his spine, relishing every inch of delicious skin contact.

His arm remained in place as his steady palm softly caressed her ass cheek. "You know..." he intoned. His low husky voice was the goddamn sexiest sound she'd ever heard. "You don't have to take Paula to school this morning."

She laughed aloud, then pressed her grinning mouth against his back to contain her mirth and express her love. "True," she conceded in a whisper. "This house is her school now."

"Does that mean we're her teachers?" he confirmed, sounding authentically curious.

She kissed the back of his silky shoulder, then propped herself up on her right elbow so she could look down at his devastatingly handsome profile. His eyes were open, but he kept his head on its side, kindly letting her ogle his grinning visage.

"_You're_ the teacher," she clarified. "I'm the principal."

His adorable dimple emerged—it seemed to be his indicator of exquisite happiness. "Once the curriculum is ready, I'll submit it for your review," he playfully proposed. He turned his neck to look up at her. _H__er breath caught._ His glimmering eyes exuded affection so powerful, it felt like wind on her face. "Good morning," he whispered, the distinctive vibration of his voice an instant aphrodisiac. Her heart surged with exuberant love.

She leaned down and lightly touched his tender lips with hers, then—upon feeling his warm mouth open welcomingly—she sunk her mouth into his. A divine tingle spread from her lips, across her cheeks to the base of her head and down the length of her spine, fanning out through her abdomen, then funneling between her legs, pleasantly awakening her entire body, ushering her from sweet slumber directly into aroused bliss. _My god they were lucky._ She moved her mouth against his in a persistent rolling wave, pressing her fingers against his abs greedily, mirroring the fervor of her kiss.

Dangerously turned on, she compelled herself to yank her mouth off of his, lifting her head so she could gaze down at him. Mesmerized by his sublime beauty, she watched him blink his eyes open. "Good morning," she whispered back.

His gorgeous eyes shimmered. Without breaking eye contact, he rotated his left shoulder towards her so he was laying flat on his back. She scooted backwards to make space, slipping her left leg over his to prevent herself from getting too perilously close to the mattress's edge.

He slid his left arm under her propped up ribcage and stretched his other arm across his body and around her waist. The fingers of both his hands lightly stroked her spine, perhaps wanting to be a failsafe between her and the edge of the bed, not wanting his precautionary measures to feel obtrusive.

"How did you sleep?" he asked sincerely, his pupils searching hers, his voice again reverberating on an airwave no one else used—a channel to her soul that had apparently been reserved for him. She'd had lovers, she'd been in love, she'd even been married, yet with Sergio, she felt soulfully entwined, their connection lightyears beyond anything she'd ever experienced. Her love for him was like the expanding universe, growing beyond the edges of what previously existed, pushing the boundaries of creation past what she'd thought possible, constantly transforming the infinite abyss into more space for glorious life. 

She felt herself grinning so intensely, she couldn't speak—she rested her left palm on his abs and exhaled to regain her composure. She loved everything about him, from the immense and profound—_his intelligence, his will, his moral fiber_—to the small and mundane—_his voice, his smell, the suppleness of his skin_. "I slept incredibly well," she divulged quietly.

His dark brown irises sparkled with relief, then deepened with content. 

She wondered if he knew how meaningful it was that her conscious and subconscious mind felt safe with him. As a police officer, she'd directly exposed herself to traumatic events for twenty years; she was the person who ran forward while others ran away. Being verbally and physically attacked was inherent to the job; dodging blows and surviving bullets was built in to her psyche. Hers had been a life of twitching awake to receive grim news, then taking action while civilians grieved. Perhaps her constant exposure to violence, and her determination to not just withstand it but to grittily hunt down perpetrators while deadly chaos reigned, was part of why it took her eighteen months to acknowledge she was being beaten at home. The frighteningly gradual emergence of Alberto's abuse had made her nervous system more skittish than ever, even less trusting of the menacing world than before. That's why it was remarkable that her primed reptile brain felt tranquility around Sergio; at her core, she felt enveloped in mutual protection, calmly able to sleep through the night.

"What about you?" she asked into his attentive eyes, her fingers lightly tracing nonsensical patterns against his stomach. 

"If I told you it was the best sleep of my life," he answered candidly and heartfelt, "would you believe me?"

Her heart seized at the memory of the only other morning they'd awoken together, when she'd opened her eyes to his worried face and he'd confessed that it had been the best night of his life. At the time, she'd thought he was being hyperbolic. When he'd proposed that they take her mother and daughter and run away together, she realized he wasn't. "I believe you," she assured him.

Paula's cheery chattering erupted on the other side of the wall, words too muffled to make out, even as they steadily amplified. Her mom was speaking now, words just as indistinguishable, but tone characteristically even-keeled.

Raquel noticed Sergio's fingers had fallen still on her back; like her, he was listening with rapt attention. "That's my alarm clock," she pointed out.

He nodded rapidly, his supportive eyes conveying he understood.

She leaned down and briefly kissed his wanton lips, not wanting to leave, but also wanting to check on her mom and Paula before either of them got disoriented or got into trouble. She rolled away and sat up, placing her feet on the wooden floor. She felt the tips of his fingers graze the curve of her back, not asking her to reconsider, just savoring what they had while they had it. Smiling to herself, she stood up and padded towards their pile of clothes, stacked neatly on the back of the chair across the room.

She slipped on her underwear, ignored her bra, and then instead of reaching for her shirt and skirt from yesterday, found herself holding up his navy button-up. "Do you mind if I wear this?" she asked, spinning around to face him. She'd had to pack light, prioritizing her mom and Paula's belongings over her own. Wearing Sergio's button-up, doused in his heady musk, sounded so comfortable right now.

"Of course," he replied, tone surprised yet insistent as he pushed himself up and turned towards her, modestly pulling the sheet over his lap. He sat on the edge of the bed with his knees together, his feet on the floor. "What's mine is yours," he blurted, as if unable to contain the surging generosity inside him. As soon as the words left his mouth, his neck bent slightly, perhaps embarrassed by his obvious yearning to be indisputably intertwined.

She tilted her head while gazing at him. _She wouldn't have asked to enshroud herself in his clothing if she wasn't just as eager to enmesh!_ She'd already shed her lifejacket; she was ready to jump into the deep end of the pool, together_._

He nodded gratefully, as if he could hear her inner thoughts.

She marveled at their ability to wordlessly communicate and slipped her arms into the sleeves of his shirt, immediately noticing how roomy it felt. Glancing over her shoulder, she was satisfied to see that it reached past her underwear. She looked down at her chest to visually align the buttons. Starting between her breasts and working her way down, she carefully fastened each one, then folded up her left sleeve. As she folded up her right, her eyes drifted up to his.

He was still seated on the edge of the mattress, mouth slightly agape.

She laughed. She wasn't trying to be provocative, but apparently, wearing his shirt was having a transfixing effect on him.

The sheet modestly covering his lap only added to his aura of innocence, substantiating her theory that when he wasn't in the heat of passion, he wasn't yet comfortable being naked around her. Last night, she'd noticed him trying to hide his shyness about undressing while she watched. That's why she'd nonchalantly turned off the light at his request. Her hypothesis was that when they were making love, his mental processor—which must typically whir with simultaneous calculations—became singularly focused on her pleasure and his, temporarily quieting the droning hum of shame. She longed for him to feel free of his inner critic more hours of every day, more days of every year, more years of his life. From the little he'd already shared, she knew he'd had a painful childhood. He was a sensitive soul, so she imagined the wounds ran deep. As they built a life together and spent time loving one another, she hoped his scabs would heal and mental serenity could become the norm.

"Would you like your glasses?" she asked gently, knowing that he seemed more self-possessed with them on.

"Yes, please," he appreciatively responded.

She delicately picked them up and walked his direction. He smiled bashfully as she got closer, likely as she came into focus.

Instead of stopping her forward momentum when she reached him, she stepped all the way into his personal space, widening her stance to straddle his lap. She felt her breath catch at the same time that she saw his mouth form the shape of a gasp. It was intoxicating to be this close to him, with his bent knees between her thighs, their stomachs and faces just inches apart.

He swallowed, nervously, as if noticing his own desire caused him to worry. The world had shattered his hope one too many times. Perhaps he was afraid to let himself long for something—or someone_. _Perhaps he moderated his expectations to prevent future disappointment, struggling to sustain his belief that he could experience bliss with her now. _Oh, Sergio._ He really was a heartbreaking juxtaposition of unwavering confidence and genuine self-consciousness, shocking intelligence and puzzling innocence. She felt fiercely protective of all of him, especially his tender heart.

She carefully held his glasses up between their bodies as an offering—a show of care.

He gingerly took the frames from her fingers and slid them onto his face with both hands. Immediately, his spine straightened and his chin lifted, as if his glasses were a magic amulet, imbuing the wearer with the power of boldness. His grin became radiant, unpretentiously sexy, dazzling her so quickly she had to blink to keep the room from spinning.

She felt his self-assured hands slip up the back of her shirt—_dear god!_—his electric palms stroked her lower back suggestively, just above the hem of her panties. Titillating heat ignited between her legs as he solidly pulled her towards him; she closed the gap by taking half a step forward, bringing her face just over his.

He looked up at her; his lips were separated, his alluring eyes soft. _How was he so fucking sweet and so fucking hot at the same time? _She felt her breath quicken, her heart race, her vulva pulse, and she envisioned pushing him back against the mattress, climbing on top of him, and fucking him till they came.

She heard a breathy lustful moan escape her lips, revealing, to both of them, the intensity of her craving. His grin grew even more irresistible. 

She hurriedly reached around his head, clutching the nape of his neck with one hand, kneading the back of his scalp with the other. She decided she loved holding him like this, his head securely in her hands where she knew she could keep him safe, where she knew she could heal his heart. Her own head lolled as she luxuriated in the feeling of his sensual fingers rubbing the curve of her back—now the curve of her ass—with seductive intent.

She parted her lips and canted her head. As she leaned down towards his fluttering eyelids, she teased them both, keeping her mouth centimeters from his, enjoying his steamy breath on her lips. She felt her eyes roll as his hands salaciously squeezed and spread her ass cheeks. _H__oly fuck._

Before she knew what she was doing, she reached down and yanked the sheet off his lap. His stiff magnificent cock rose instantly under her gaze, already throbbing with as much maddening hunger as she felt.

_Slam._ She quickly looked up and met his eyes; his were wide. _Slam. _It sounded like cabinet doors were being opened and closed by a curious eight-year-old in the next room. _Slam, slam._

She laughed aloud; he laughed silently. She leaned her forehead against his. With a sigh, she relaxed her grip on the back of his head; he relaxed his grip on her ass. He moved his hands to an idyl position on either side of her hips.

"I better get out there before they rip your house apart," she reasoned with a wistful smile, relishing this last moment of being eye to eye.

"Our house," he sweetly reminded. "Do you want alone time with them," he checked, "or do you want me to come with you?" His thumbs lightly grazed her hips, assuring her that he was fine with either choice.

"Come with me," she responded reflexively as she lifted her forehead off his and stepped off of his lap.

He grinned joyfully, then gave a decisive single nod. "Gladly."

He stood up and walked past her, obviously headed to retrieve his pants from across the room. She admired his bare backside, his strong legs, his cute ass. She was beyond delighted that at least for the moment, he seemed to have jettisoned a bit of his needless body shame.

"Only one problem," he remarked as he stepped into his boxers and turned towards her. "You're wearing my shirt."

She giggled lightly and watched him putting his slacks on as she mused. "I'm okay with you being shirtless in front of them, if you are. We live in a tropical climate, after all, and you and Paula will be getting swimming lessons soon enough."

"I would swim in a shirt and tie if I could," he proclaimed, his dimples exposing that he was being humorous; she returned his smile, utterly tickled that he had the self-awareness and humility to make a good-natured joke about himself. "In all seriousness," he said, zipping his pants and furrowing his brow, "will it be too jarring for them to see you wearing my shirt and me without one? It seems a bit explicit considering they just re-met me last night. To them, I'm still a stranger."

Her heart swelled at his attentiveness. "I appreciate you being sensitive to how they feel." She stepped towards him. "But back in Madrid, you experienced what my mom is like." He cocked his head, apparently unsure what she meant. She came to a stop in front of him and reached out to grasp his hand. "If it's not blatantly obvious, my mom will ask if we just had sex anyway." He chuckled as she shrugged. "It might as well be clear so she doesn't accidentally ask in earshot of Paula. As for Paula..." She glanced down at their clasped hands. "Truthfully, I'm not sure what's best. Tell me if this makes sense..." She gazed up into his earnest eyes; he nodded. "You're going to be part of her life. If some part of her is still hoping that her dad and I will get back together, seeing us like this puts an end to that sooner so she can grieve and work through her feelings. It shows her that you and I share things, that we're as close as two adults can get, and that the four of us are the _household unit_ now." She lifted her shoulders, feeling uncertain, wanting to hear what he thought. She'd refrained from saying _family unit_, not wanting to overwhelm him with the magnitude of that responsibility.

"Th-that logic makes sense to me," he stammered, pushing his glasses up his nose with his free hand. "I haven't studied child psychology, so I can't speak from expertise, and I certainly can't speak from experience..."

"You don't need experience with kids to remember what it was like to be one," she reasoned. "What would you have wanted at that age?"

"Honestly?" he asked rhetorically. "Honesty. I wish adults had been more truthful, less obscure," he admitted, his cadence matter-of-fact, his words edged with sorrow. "I wish I'd known my mom was dying. They pretended she wasn't. They convinced me—and maybe themselves—that she'd get better. That lie only added a layer of betrayal to her death—a death which was already painful."

She winced, feeling just a sliver of his childhood pain. _She'd been__ right: he'd been burned by hope before_. Subconsciously, he probably feared that if he hoped too much for the presence of someone he loved, the cruel universe would take them away forever. His brooding eyes seemed to be asking that question of fate right now as he looked at her with palpable love and what felt like anticipatory grief.

She inhaled deeply and was gratified to see his chest expand as he filled his lungs, too. She exhaled and watched his bare shoulders relax.

She lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed the back of it. She'd never kissed a man's hand like that, but it felt right, and she didn't imagine he'd mind the gender nonconformity. His soulful eyes looked soothed by her affection. She kissed his knuckles again, and again, then turned his hand over and tilted her neck to kiss the center of his palm, then each of his fingertips.

He softly laughed. She looked up and he managed a faint smile, apparently trying to convey he was okay.

"Thank you for sharing..." she acknowledged, well aware that vulnerability was a choice. "...and thanks for being a sounding board about Paula." She angled her head towards the door. "Shall we?"

"Let's go," he affirmed, adjusting the grip of their hands so they could walk, side by side, towards the door. "Do I look okay?" he suddenly asked, stopping in his tracks, smoothing the sides of his beard with his free hand while looking at her with eyebrows raised.

"You look great," she assured him, feeling the sides of her mouth curve upward. _His anxiety meant he cared what they thought. _She compressed his hand to comfort him. He squeezed back as she opened the door.

Together, they entered the breezy main room of the sunlit little house.

Her mom was freshly dressed and ready for the day, sitting on the foot of the crisply made bed, reading a pamphlet about a local birding tour she'd picked up yesterday at the hotel. Paula was sitting on one of the bar-height stools in her favorite pajamas, hunched over the countertop and swinging her purple-clad legs forward and back. She pressed a sheet of paper against the counter with her left palm while tightly clutching a blue marker in her right.

Both Paula and her mom snapped their necks towards them. "Mom, look!" Paula exclaimed, proudly lifting her drawing of a long yellow beach and a big palm tree.

Raquel dropped Sergio's hand and hurried over to Paula, wanting to make it clear to her eight-year-old just how excited she was to see her. "What did you make, my love?" she cooed reflexively, grabbing Paula's temples between her hands and kissing and nuzzling the crown of Paula's head, overcome with the existential relief of being in the presence of one's child. Paula continued drawing, perhaps feeling secure enough that she didn't need to climb into Raquel's arms. Raquel let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding, elated that Paula seemed content.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her mom place the pamphlet on the edge of the bed and stand up, looking at Sergio with unabashed curiosity as she smoothed the front of her light teal dress.

"Good morning, Mariví," Sergio greeted from where he still stood near the bedroom door, as if waiting to be invited into the living room of his own house.

"Good morning..." her mom conspicuously trailed off, obviously unsure of his name.

"Sergio!" Paula filled in without missing a beat, apparently able to draw, receive head nuzzles, and listen to the conversation happening behind her—all at the same time. Raquel tried to suppress a laugh, moving her hands from Paula's temples to Paula's back, so she could rub her little girl's knotted muscles. Raquel peered over her daughter's hunched shoulders, watching her carefully draw the long wavy line of an unmistakable ocean horizon.

"Sergio..." Raquel heard her mom repeat, as if trying to use his name to unlock a vault of memories.

Raquel felt a familiar twinge of pain in her heart as she wondered how her mom was doing this morning, and whether it was just Sergio's name that had been forgotten or whether other details from yesterday eluded her too. Raquel kept rubbing Paula's back while turning her head to observe her mom closely.

Her mom canted her head, then blinked rapidly and widened her eyes, as if a spotlight had flicked on and she could clearly see Sergio for the first time. "A-ha, Sergio! How did you two sleep?" her mom buoyantly asked in her typical lively tone, popping her eyebrows up as Sergio opened his mouth to answer. "Or did you _not_ get any sleep?" Her mischievous eyes glinted.

Sergio's mouth froze open in alarm. His eyes darted to Raquel's.

"We _slept_ fine, Mom," Raquel interjected with intentional emphasis, hoping her mom would get the hint that she needed to be more discreet while Paula listened.

Her mom's teal dress ruffled in the breeze as she turned to look at Raquel. The impish woman bounced her shoulders with delight and tilted her neck towards Sergio, wordlessly conveying how unequivocally happy she was for Raquel. Raquel felt herself smile in return, unable to be annoyed at her well-intentioned mother, who was simply invested in her love life.

Raquel glanced back at Sergio's wary eyes, pressing her lips together and shrugging apologetically, simultaneously embarrassed and amused.

His shoulders relaxed and his face transformed into a relieved smile, now that he knew she felt okay. "What about you, Mariví?" he calmly asked, shifting his eyes away from Raquel to respectfully reengage her mother.

"I slept wonderfully, thank you. The sound of the ocean is very soothing, don't you think?" her mom responded while Sergio nodded. "The best night of the trip so far."

_Raquel's heart surged: her mom remembered they'd been on a trip, but did she recall they'd agreed to stay?_

"I'm glad to hear it," Sergio responded politely.

Raquel returned her attention to Paula, whose back she was still rubbing. Paula had switched out her blue marker for a brown one and was now drawing a big rectangle on the beach. As Paula added a window to what was clearly becoming a house, Raquel scanned Sergio's kitchen and noticed two drawers and a cabinet were ajar.

"And what happened here?" Raquel prompted quietly into Paula's ear, gently squeezing her daughter's shoulders to get her attention.

"I was looking for a green marker," Paula stated matter-of-factly as she drew an angled roof. "Mine ran out. I still need to finish the tree." Raquel peered at the faded green top of Paula's palm tree; the fronds were faintly filled in by the desperate scribble of a dry pen. Raquel noticed the green marker was set aside on the countertop, separated from the others, which were clumped within reach of Paula's right hand.

"I'm sorry I don't have any colored markers," Sergio apologized as he stepped into the kitchen area and closed the errant drawers and cabinet, coming to a stop across the narrow bar from her and Paula. Raquel smiled and he smiled back, her heart giddy at the domesticity of massaging Paula's shoulders while meeting his adoring gaze.

"That's okay," Paula chirped. She shrugged without looking up, then busily capped her brown pen and picked up a black one. She started drawing the outline of an out-of-proportion person, standing on the yellow beach beside the house. "You don't have drawing pens," Paula chattered, "so why do you have stacks of small paper?"

Raquel furrowed her brow at Sergio. _Had he dangerously kept unprinted currency paper as a souvenir?_

"...and why does your paper feel funny? It feels _shiny_. It doesn't feel normal."

Sergio reached for the handle of a nearby drawer and pulled out a small red square of paper. "It's for origami," he answered Paula verbally, while his eyes twinkled at Raquel. His knowing grin seemed to say: _Come on now, who do you think I am? _

Raquel smiled sheepishly for her needless concern.

Paula abruptly stopped drawing and looked up at Sergio, intrigued. "What's or-i-gami?"

"The art of Japanese paper folding." He placed the red square on the countertop in front of Paula, then precisely folded it in half to make two rectangles.

"What does that mean?" Paula asked, watching Sergio's hands with fascination as he folded, unfolded, and flipped the paper. Paula was so transfixed that Raquel took the liberty of removing the black marker from her daughter's grip, covering the pen with its chewed cap so it wouldn't dry out.

"It's the process of turning a two-dimensional piece of paper..." he detailed as quickly as his fingers moved, without looking up. "...into a three-dimensional representation of a real-world object." He created a triangular point at one end of the paper.

"My, my, he's an unusual fellow, isn't he?" her mom marveled as she came up on Raquel's right and took a seat on the stool beside Paula.

Raquel cringed, hoping her delicate Sergio didn't feel otherized or ridiculed. "Sergio's uniqueness is part of why I love him," she declared protectively before she had a chance to censor herself. _Did she see his fingers falter for a split second, caught off guard by her public proclamation of love?_ If Paula was surprised to hear the pronouncement, she didn't show it. Instead, she continued staring with rapt attention at the paper transforming beneath Sergio's hands.

"Well, he's obviously good with his fingers," her mom stage whispered.

"Mom!" Raquel warned, shooting her a scowl.

The puckish woman lifted her shoulders innocently.

Raquel shook her head, at a loss for how to control a willful septuagenarian. She glanced back at Sergio whose dimples had emerged; his eyes were still trained downward as he rapidly, methodically folded the paper into five triangular points.

"Why do you like playing with paper?" Paula wondered.

"It relaxes me when I'm nervous," he patiently shared, pressing an accordion fold into the middle of his creation. "And I like the feeling of constructing something out of nothing—or rather, out of what others see as nothing. It's satisfying to take a piece of plain discardable paper and turn it into an object of perceived value."

He flipped over the tightly folded red paper. _It was a frog! _

Paula giggled with surprise and delight.

He pushed his index finger down on the back of the little frog, then let go. It hopped towards Paula.

"How did you do that?!" Paula squealed, laughing so hard she could barely get her words out.

"By memorizing a set of rules and then practicing the sequence exactly," he explained honestly, pressing the back of the frog again so that it hopped onto Paula's drawing paper. "You try," he offered, turning the frog around so that its back faced Paula.

Paula eagerly pressed down on the little amphibian. It hopped across the counter towards Sergio as Paula erupted with peals of laughter.

"Would you like to learn origami?" Sergio asked Paula gently.

Raquel noted how careful he was to not sound assumptive. He obviously wanted to make sure it was actually what Paula wanted.

"Yes!" Paula cheered, straightening her back as if reporting for active duty. Raquel, her mom, and Sergio all laughed lovingly at Paula's enthusiasm. "Yes, _please_," Paula amended.

"It'll take time and step-by-step practice," Sergio cautioned.

"I know," Paula said soberly, like a sensible adult committing to a challenging job. "What does _dimensional_ mean?" she asked seriously, proving she'd heard every phrase, even those she hadn't yet asked about.

"That's a _great_ question," Sergio affirmed, dramatically raising a finger in the air, perhaps underscoring it as the question of the day. He was apparently as excited to talk about _dimensions_ as Paula was to learn origami.

"Before we get into a physics lesson..." Raquel interrupted.

"...one could say it's a philosophy lesson," Sergio pointed out, turning his raised finger into an upturned palm.

"Either way," Raquel deliberately continued, smirking fondly at his exactness, "no physics or philosophy lessons until the adults have coffee."

"Okay!" Paula cheeped amenably. Raquel snuffled the crown Paula's head one last time as Paula merrily retrieved her black marker.

"Not a problem," Sergio similarly agreed as Raquel walked around the counter. "I'll make us coffee," he concluded as she arrived beside him.

She slid her hand against the smooth skin of his lower back. A jolt of breathtaking energy flowed through her palm, as if an electric circuit was now complete. She bit the inside of her cheek to maintain her composure. "You peel the mangoes," she recommended, looking to the wooden bowl at the end of the counter, which contained the pair they'd picked up at yesterday's market. "I'll make the coffee."

He looked down at her reverently and nodded. As she gazed up at him, she felt the urge to push up on her toes and peck his lips, or at least his cheek. She could feel his palpable desire, too, as he stiffly kept his arms at his sides, obviously restraining himself from returning her touch. She removed her hand from his back before either of them lost control. After all, her mom was shamelessly staring—her elbows on the bartop, her chin propped on the back of her interlinked fingers, as if watching one of her beloved telenovelas—and although Paula's eyes were focused on her paper as she added more people to her drawing, Raquel had no doubt her observant child would notice a kiss in her peripheral vision. Raquel smiled softly and he smiled back: _wearing his shirt and announcing her love was enough of a show for one morning._

She whirled away and circled the island, which housed the stovetop. Picking up the silver moka pot off the range, she flipped up the lid with her thumb to make sure it was clean. _Of course it was spotless._ Sergio seemed like the kind of person who had a daily routine of immediately cleaning up after himself instead of letting messes linger till the next day. "Dear, where are your coffee grounds?" she inquired as he passed behind her and headed for the knife block in the corner.

"Beans and grinder are in the cabinet to the left of the fridge," he warmly replied as he slid a paring knife out of the block.

She spun around and opened the cabinet, then stifled a laugh as she realized that Sergio used a manual grinder. It was a beautiful one—dark wood handle and casing, gleaming stainless steel—and it looked smartly engineered so that as you turned the handle, the grounds fell into the glass base, which presumably unscrewed. Despite its attractive quality, she found it amusing that even for his morning coffee, Sergio couldn't take the easy route: no automated electric grinder for him.

"What's so funny?" he asked knowingly as he rinsed the mangoes in the sink to her left.

She glanced at him warmheartedly, feeling utterly smitten as they worked near one another in the kitchen. His dimple flashed, perhaps feeling the same. As she placed the tinted jar of coffee beans on the counter and lifted the grinder out of the cabinet, she divulged. "I just find it adorable, and not at all surprising, that you hand grind your coffee."

He kept grinning relaxedly as he stepped towards her and reached around her back—_she felt her breathing speed up as she inhaled his scent, wishing she could turn into his bare chest and embrace him!_—he stepped away, having retrieved a cherrywood chopping board from the set of boards to her right.

She pressed her lips together to keep from losing concentration as she poured the dark coffee beans into the top of the artisanal appliance. Spinning around, heavy grinder in hand, she carefully set it on the island, then stretched the fingers of her right hand to prepare for light labor. Sergio had set the chopping board a few feet to her right and was starting to peel the paper-thin skin off a deep yellow mango.

She rhythmically turned the hand crank as they stood serenely side by side, looking across the island counter to the bartop where Paula sat facing them, shoulders hunched over her drawing paper. Raquel's mom had rotated her stool so that she—like the two of them—could admire the view of the ocean out the wall-length windows beyond the bed. The clouds were light and frothy like the waves breaking against the shore, and though the seabirds seemed to have scattered—perhaps having picked clean this stretch of beach—the steady thrum of the tumbling sea was a constant reminder that they'd escaped. Without meaning to, Raquel made a sound of uncontainable contentment, somewhere between a whimper and a sigh. She shot her eyes towards Sergio to see if the white noise of the grinder had muffled her sound. His eyes sparkled, revealing that he'd heard, and reassuring her that he felt just as euphoric.

She watched him place a slice of mango on the grey ceramic plate and, for the first time, noticed the intricate flower pattern he was making with each uniformed segment.

"That's a beautiful arrangement," she remarked in awe. Maybe, like with origami, he enjoyed creating art that was meticulous and repetitious.

"I've never tried to plate fruit before," he admitted with a modest wholesome grin. "I'm just copying what I've seen locals serve to tourists." He placed another slice with care.

"Well, you don't need to go to that kind of trouble to serve mango to your family," she pointed out, then immediately caught her slip of the tongue. He must have noticed too because his hands froze, mid-slice, before smoothly resuming as if nothing unusual had been said. "I mean..." _She didn't want him to feel pressure to call her family his own after less than a day!_

"It's okay," he whispered demurely, keeping his eyes on the movement of his paring knife.

"...it just seems like a lot of work to create something beautiful that'll get eaten in under five minutes," she clarified, trying to distract him from her faux pas.

"It's really okay," he repeated quietly as he placed another segment like a flower petal. She tried to calm her nerves by focusing on the perpetual motion of her shoulder and bicep and wrist. "Besides," he softly added, "who better to spend time creating beauty for than one's family?" _Her breath caught._ Though he'd sidestepped saying _my family _by speaking in third-person, he'd bravely leaned into the concept, regardless. "And as someone who spent half his life obsessed with control..." His dimple flickered in and out, exposing shy humility about himself. He delicately cut around the pit of the mango. "...it's probably a healthy reminder of impermanence. Creating an ephemeral gift is a meditative offering that honors the transitory nature of life."

"Like a sand mandala," she reflected.

"Yes, exactly," he replied, sounding surprised, then nodding to himself with the satisfied smile of having been understood.

It had been years—more than twenty in fact—since the spring in her youth when she'd turned a corner and stumbled upon Tibetan monks in the Lisbon streets who had joined local Portuguese celebrants in honoring the twentieth anniversary of Carnation Day. She'd been aware the friends she'd made while working at the restaurant had been too young to remember the nonviolent revolution of 1974. Yet, the stories they told were vivid and evocative and had ignited a revolutionary spirit inside her that she hadn't known existed. She remembered telling her mom over the phone that maybe this wasn't a gap year—that this was her new life. Her dad had joined the line and Raquel passionately recounted how the revolutionaries had placed carnations in the muzzles of their guns, and how a song broadcast by radio had been the signal to civilians and rebel captains to start their coup. She ended her tale by describing how peaceful collective action had ended authoritarian dictatorship and the injustice of colonization in Africa.

After a heavy pause, her dad disclosed that of course he and Raquel's mom were well aware of the Carnation Revolution, and had been young adults at the time. With gravity, he reminded her that twenty years later, Portugal was still in economic turmoil and hadn't recovered from decolonization. He said the real heroes weren't those who called out what was wrong with a system, but those who had the guts to roll up their sleeves and do something about it. Raquel's temper had flared then, and she'd retorted that when dictators had power they weren't inclined to welcome change, so revolution was necessary to overturn tyranny. Her dad had conceded her point, but then craftily leveraged it to say that since Portugal and Spain and all of Western Europe were democracies now, romantically dwelling on the political crusades of the past was lazy and immature. The current crusade, he contended, was coming home and serving one's country as a civil servant, impacting the system from the inside, and humbly building a better government by participating, not criticizing.

He went on to take potshots at her newfound friends, saying she was wasting her time and talent talking philosophy with dishwashers content to loiter at the fringes of society, editorializing instead of organizing, abdicating their civic responsibilities. She'd hung up the phone and avoided calling home for the rest of that spring and summer, defiantly staying in Lisbon, developing relationships and community, learning about herself and her beliefs—_until he__ died. _Her orientation to the world changed in an instant. In her grief, she reverted back to who she'd always been: serious, self-sacrificing, stable. She returned home and resumed the role of emotional rock for her mom and sister, resenting her momentary dalliance with radical ideals. She was more determined than ever to support her family and country, so enrolled at the Police Academy and never looked back. Thankfully, studying psychology and going through therapy had helped her to process her grief and guilt, so she no longer saw his heart attack as her fault—_it was yet another example of impermanence_.

"Raquel," Sergio whispered affectionately, breaking her trance.

"Hm?" she turned her neck towards him. 

He grinned and jutted his chin towards the grinder she was furiously cranking. "I think you're done."

She realized he was right—the crank had gotten too easy to turn. Chuckling at herself, she lifted off the top, validating the chamber was empty. She unscrewed the glass base and admired the fresh grounds, then brought the little vessel to her nose and inhaled. The sharp, sweet smell grounded her in the present and helped her emerge from the sensory haze of a twenty-year-old memory.

She glanced right and met Sergio's tender brown eyes. Her temporary time away caused her to see him anew: she was struck, yet again, by his unpretentious beauty,  the profundity of his presence, the depth of his character.  It _was_ possible to be a practical idealist—a strategic rebel. He was her sexy  bespectacled revolutionary.

"Would you mind giving me a hand?" he asked, his smile unintentionally ravishing as he pushed the peelings  from both mangoes into his broad cupped hands. She set down the coffee grounds while he spun 180 degrees. "The compost is under the sink," he indicated. She followed his eyes and crouched down to open the cabinet, then lifted the lid off a small metal bin that contained fruit scraps. He squatted down beside her and emptied his hands. "Thank you," he said into her ear, perhaps as an excuse to hover his mouth near her skin. The back of her neck tingled—_inexplicably aroused_. "Do you think we can risk me kissing your cheek?" he intoned huskily, as if being hunkered down made them less visible.

Out of the corner of her eye, Raquel saw her mom was still facing away, gazing at the ocean, and Paula was still drawing with the intense focus of an artist.

Raquel grinned at him and nodded, beyond happy that he was willing to be incautious and give in to a tug of desire. He leaned in towards her cheek—she rotated her head at the last second so that her lips brushed his! She resisted the urge to grab his neck and pull him in for a deep kiss. Instead, she let their lips separate, the brief contact only making them grin wider as they gazed hungrily into each other's eyes.

"I can see you, you know," Paula remarked indifferently without looking up from her paper.

Raquel saw Sergio's eyes grow wide and felt hers do the same.

They stood up—_rapidly_—and stepped away from one another, like teenagers scattering after having been caught. Sergio turned around and busily washed his hands in the sink while Raquel returned to her coffee station, picking up the empty moka pot and unscrewing its spouted top.

"You aren't very good at sneaking," Paula criticized, not bothering to lift her eyes from her drawing, where she appeared to be adding a purple swath to her sky.

"What did I miss?" Raquel's mom asked as she twisted her stool to face them.

"Mom and Sergio kissed."

"Oh my," her mom said with an entertained smile, raising her forehead at Raquel, clearly curious to see how Raquel would reply.

"It's okay, Grandma," Paula soothed, talking while coloring. "They're partners."

Raquel stifled a giggle, overcome with relief and joy at how quickly Paula seemed to be adapting.

Sergio laughed silently too as he appeared to her right, carrying a pitcher of filtered water and extending his empty hand. Raquel passed him the bottom chamber of the moka pot, which he poured water into as she tipped fresh coffee grounds into the metal basket.

"Well, yes, that's true, isn't it," her mom verbally responded to Paula while shrugging at Raquel, evidently just as shocked by Paula's handling of this life transition.

Smiling to herself, Raquel shook the basket gently so the grounds settled evenly, then dropped it into the top of the full water chamber, which Sergio steadily held out for her. He screwed the spouted top on, then placed the moka pot on the stove, turning the dial with his other hand. "Cups and saucers are above the knife block," he shared, considerately anticipating her question before she asked it. As she spun around to retrieve the grey dishware from the cabinet, she heard the gas range _click-click-click_ until the _whoosh_ of the burner caught flame. "Coffee in a few minutes, Mariví," Sergio kindly announced as Raquel returned beside him, carrying a carefully balanced stack of saucers and cups. He lifted them out of her hands, one-by-one, placing them as paired sets on the island counter.

"I remember you now..." her mom marveled. Raquel's neck snapped up; she watched her mom's eyes brighten. "You came to the house and we had coffee."

Sergio pushed his glasses up his nose, the muscles of his face tightening, nervously. "That's right."

"I'd wondered what happened to you, Sal..." She cut herself off and furrowed her brow,  obviously trying to disentangle what she assumed was her jumbled memory. _Raquel felt a pang of guilt—for once, her mom's memory wasn't wrong!_ "..._Ser_gio," her mom enunciated slowly, hesitantly, while squinting at him. He nodded hurriedly and smiled awkwardly. "Wasn't that around the time of that awful hostage crisis? The one Raquel quit her job over?"

Raquel felt a surge of frustration at hearing the word _quit_, which she'd corrected her mom about countless times.

"Uh..." Sergio's eyes darted sideways to Raquel. "...yes?"

"Yes, Mom," Raquel validated, then took a deep breath and placed her palms flat on the island counter to contain her exasperation. "I _resigned_ from the force, not _quit_." It was important to her that Paula grew up grasping the distinction, and Raquel knew her child was stealthily listening as she colored a patch of pink sky.  "I'm proud of what I accomplished during my career. _Quitting_ means giving up; that's not what I did. I chose to resign due to a shift in perspective and principles. I didn't _drop out_ in shame, I _walked out_ with dignity."

Her mom put both hands in the air, as if surrendering to Raquel's argument. Vexed,  Raquel shook her head to herself. She could tell her mom was acquiescing, yet again, not because she truly understood Raquel's point, but because she wanted to placate her eldest daughter, who she'd always labeled strong-willed and impassioned. They were traits her mother lauded unless they led to disagreement, in which case, her mom saw them as the rough edges of Raquel's personality.

Sergio's flitting eyes seemed to be reading the situation: both her mom's aversion to conflict, and Raquel's irritation that they never reached a satisfying resolution to disagreement.

"I have a question, Mariví," Sergio spoke up, calm and respectful. "Do you agree that Raquel has grit?" 

Paula looked up suddenly, watching Sergio so intently, her eyes hardly blinked.  


"Absolutely," her mom conceded, lowering her hands, then resting her elbows and clasped fingers on the counter. "Raquel has always been determined. She's a fighter."

"Given that Raquel's resolve—and resilience in adversity—are among her countless admirable qualities," he politely, yet adamantly, emphasized. "Can you see why she might be frustrated to hear the word _quit_, when, in fact, her decision to leave the force..." He cleared his throat. "...took courage and commitment to her values?"

"Yep!" Paula chimed in, even though the  question hadn't been directed at her. Raquel felt herself smirking, and noticed Sergio smiling too, clearly endeared by her daughter.

"Yes," Raquel's mom pensively admitted, then merrily popped her shoulders and tilted her head towards Paula. "I agree with Paulita here. She knows what she's talking about."

Raquel wished her mom hadn't immediately jumped to humor, hopscotching over an answer so quickly it was easy to miss. Raquel sighed and relaxed her shoulders. Her mom was always going to be a person who tried to leaven a tense situation. What Sergio had managed to draw out of her was as close to a satisfying conclusion as Raquel was ever going to get.  She slid her hands off the counter and reached to her right, grabbing Sergio's hand and squeezing it, wanting him to know just how much she appreciated him. He pumped her hand in return.

"So you two have been together since then?" her mom asked Sergio, as curious and high-spirited as ever. She was gesturing between the two of them as if tracing an invisible line back and forth. "Since the time we had coffee?"

"Yes, we have," he boldly confirmed, for once not checking with Raquel first. Raquel felt herself grin irrepressibly, ridiculously besotted. She knew from last night's pillow talk that it was absolutely true: he'd been singularly committed to her during their long year apart, just as she'd been committed to him. They'd been pining, longing, dreaming for one another—even though they hadn't been in contact.

"Hmm," her mom hummed thoughtfully, then gestured at Sergio to come closer. He compressed Raquel's hand one more time, then let go and obediently walked around the island to stand across the bar from her mom. Her mom leaned over the countertop conspiratorially, causing Sergio to lean in too, his eyebrows raised, demonstrating he was ready to listen.  "You _are_ adorable, and you make my daughter happier than I've ever seen her," her mom confided, "and my gut tells me you are a deeply good person, and deeply good for Raquel..." Raquel circled the island, warily approaching, unsure where her mom was headed, but sensing she was about to drop a bomb. 

"...though I'm sure you'd agree, the timing is suspicious," her mom prodded with eyebrows raised, then laughed with practiced lightness while expertly scanning his face for clues. He glanced worriedly at Raquel as she arrived at his side. "You and my daughter meet, she leaves her successful career..." her mom sequenced the facts like a dramatic detective about to reveal she'd cracked the case. "...and now, here we are on this tropical beach, on the verge of looking for a bigger house. Don't get me wrong..." Her mom reached out and patted the back of Sergio's hand. "...I wanted her to slow down and enjoy herself too; but let me share what I've learned from knowing Raquel her whole life..."

Raquel couldn't figure out what her junior gumshoe mother was driving towards; all she knew was that her heart was in her throat.

"...since Raquel was old enough to work, she's never let anyone pay for her..."

Raquel felt her head listing to one side as she gaped at her mom, who turned towards her.

"...I don't know why you look so confused dear. You won't be happy with yourself if you wind up financially dependent on someone else, no matter how sweet your retired business owner boyfriend may be." Her mom enthusiastically  angled her head in Sergio's direction. "He seems great for you. I would hate for resentment about money to come between you down the line. I'm mentioning it now so you two can figure out what you want to do about it..."

"I'm sorry, Mariví, but it sounds like there's something you don't know," Sergio cut in, his controlled voice revealing he was actively battling anxiety.  His eyes flashed sideways and met Raquel's,  his trembling pupils betraying his nervousness. Raquel raised her eyebrows at him and felt her heart pounding too, since she didn't know what he was planning to say. "Raquel isn't financially dependent on anyone. She was part of the business when I cashed out. She earned more than enough for you and Paula to live here comfortably."

Paula's orange marker froze in place. Her little girl looked up, brows knitted together as she processed this new information. Paula's eyes shifted from Sergio, to Raquel, then back to Sergio again, as if trying to detect whether either of them was lying. Raquel swallowed—_shocked and touched by the twist in his tale!_—desperately hoping he had an unassailable story at the tip of his tongue. 

"Raquel was part of your business?" Raquel's mom restated skeptically, forehead furrowed with doubt.

"Yes," he asserted, "a critical part."

"I didn't know Mom knew how to do_ lo-gis-tics_," Paula pronounced carefully, impressively restating the word she'd learned yesterday.

"Your mom is extremely intelligent and capable," Sergio patiently explained. Raquel grinned shyly, his earnest flattery making her unusually self-conscious. "Your mom knows how to do lots of things."

"I know," Paula offhandedly agreed. "But what was her _job_ at the business?"

"Well, I had a big project, my biggest project ever..." he described in a measured tone; Paula instinctively reacted by capping her pen, as if readying for a bedtime story. "...I'd been planning it for years."

"Years?" Paula parroted in awe.  Raquel took the opportunity to slip around the counter.

"Yes, years," he confirmed, smiling softly at Raquel as she sat down on the stool next to Paula. His perceptive eyes seemed to grasp that she wanted to be in the audience, not on stage, so that her face wouldn't betray her surprise as he told his tale. His spine straightened, acknowledging the trust she'd wordlessly placed in him.  He returned his gaze to Paula. "The larger the project," he rationalized, "the more moving pieces you have to consider..."

"What do you mean _pieces_?"  Paula asked without taking her eyes off Sergio as she slid off her own stool and climbed onto Raquel's lap. Raquel silently laughed, anchoring the balls of her feet against the footrest so she could safely balance Paula on her thighs: her daughter didn't seem to realize how big she had gotten. One day, she'd surely be taller than her mom and grandma.

"..._p__ieces_ can be technology, machinery, institutional procedures, even people and their motivations..."

Raquel tenderly ran her fingers through Paula's hair while Paula listened to Sergio with fascination.

"...and each _piece_ is influenced by other pieces, sometimes in unexpected ways, which leads to chain reactions of events. So to increase your chances for success, you have to anticipate as many potential outcomes as possible and put well-designed contingency plans in place..." 

"Grandma was right," Paula interjected. "_Logistics_ does sound like a smart person's business." 

Raquel nuzzled the top of her daughter's head, uncontrollably smiling to herself at Paula's recall of yesterday's conversation.

"Perhaps..." he conceded cautiously. "...but all the intelligent planning in the world doesn't guarantee perfection." He stopped abruptly and his eyes fell to the back of his hands on the countertop.

_Raquel's heart broke._ From the slump of his shoulders and the trembling of his cheeks, she guessed he felt crushingly responsible for the deaths of his team members and brother.  She reached across the counter and touched the back of his hand. 

He warily peered up into her eyes. A glossy scrim of unshed tears made him look fearfully lost in a wilderness of guilt. 

"Sweetheart..." she murmured, rubbing his knuckles.  He nodded apologetically, as if promising he'd pull himself together.  "It's okay," she emphasized sincerely.  In her peripheral vision, Raquel could see her mom staring intently, agog at her and Sergio's mysteriously heavy exchange.  Raquel was relieved her mom recognized grief when she saw it—she was clearly tempering her curiosity with respectful silence.

"What's wrong with you?" Paula innocently asked.

Sergio took a deep breath, and attentively looked at Paula, mustering a faint smile for the eight-year-old's sake.  "I'd been training and preparing for the project for so long, I'd convinced myself perfection was possible." He shook his head at himself. "It was a high-risk, high-reward situation, and everyone knew it. Mistakes were made by members of my team..." He visibly swallowed. "...and by me." His reflective eyes flitted briefly to Raquel's. "At the moment everything could have fallen apart, your mom made decisions that saved the project."

"What kind of decisions?" Paula marveled.

"The toughest kind. The kind you can't take back. The kind that involve tradeoffs."

"That sounds like Raquel," Raquel's mom thoughtfully noted, her tone supportive.  Perhaps the vague improbability of their story no longer mattered because she'd seen, firsthand, an unshielded moment of raw emotion pass between them, which had read as undeniably real.

"What were you moving, Mom?" Paula asked, twisting her neck to look up at her.

"Hm?" Raquel pushed errant strands of her daughter's hair away from her bright inquisitive eyes.

"Sergio said _logistics_ is about moving things..."  Paula mimicked the hand gesture Sergio had used yesterday. "...from point A to point B." Paula swiveled her neck back to Sergio. "So what were you moving?"

_ Raquel almost yelped with concern but managed to turn her exclamation into a cough.  _

Sergio pushed his glasses up his nose uneasily. "Paper."

_ Raquel sniggered!  _ She hurriedly bit her lower lip to prevent more laughter.

"Paper!" Paula giggled, glancing back at Raquel, joining her mom's amusement without knowing why. Paula's face turned serious as something occurred to her; she whipped her neck back to Sergio. "You said your job was boring," she argued grumpily. "But paper isn't boring. You can make anything with paper!" she excitedly insisted. "Frogs, beaches, trees..." Paula pressed her index finger firmly against the objects in her  colorful drawing. 

_Raquel's breath caught as she noticed the scene._

A vivid, glorious sunset was the backdrop for a wide wooden house on the golden sand. Beside the house was Grandma, clearly demarcated by her silver hair. Holding her stick-figure hand was little Paula, wearing purple pajamas and a big smile. Connected to Paula's other hand was Raquel—recognizable from the brown hair Paula always drew for her. And holding Raquel's other hand was a tall, never-before-seen figure with a black beard and comically outsized glasses. 

"...you can even make a house," Paula completed her reasoning, conclusively looking up at all three adults like a confident trial lawyer submitting evidence to the jury.

"You're right, sweetie," Raquel mumbled between kisses as she loudly pecked her daughter on the temple, over and over again.

"What a beautiful picture of us here, Paulita," Raquel's mom praised.

"It isn't _this_ house, Grandma," Paula corrected. "It's our _sunset house_. The one we're going to find together."

"Our sunset house," Sergio repeated dreamily, the rich timbre of his voice reverberating in Raquel's head, echoing with a wistful nostalgia for a future that hadn't yet happened. Raquel's eyes rose up to Sergio's. His irises glimmered with a sublime happiness she'd never seen him exude.

"It's for you," Paula announced, holding up her picture to Sergio.

His eyes widened, flabbergasted. "Me?"

"Yup!" Paula reiterated as he accepted the paper solemnly, his jaw agape. "Now that we live in the Philippines, our walls don't have my pictures. I have lots of work to do." She extended her arm and fingers toward a blank sheet of paper at the end of the counter and pulled it back towards her while Raquel held her securely around the waist so she wouldn't fall.

Sergio blinked, appearing stunned as he retrieved tape from a drawer; he made two loops and stuck them to the back of the paper. "Paula, where shall we hang it?" he asked as he walked away from the kitchen, then held the drawing up against the wall, beside the front door.

"Higher," Paula directed,  gesturing up with her hand. "Make it taller so you can see it."

He slid it up slowly while keeping his eyes on Paula's.

"Stop," she declared and signaled with her palm.

He pressed the paper against the wall, then stepped back to admire it. "It's perfect," he blurted genuinely, then turned back to Raquel, her mom, and Paula as he grinned bashfully, his brimming eyes overwhelmed with joy.

Raquel discreetly used the back of her finger to wick a tear away from her eye.

"Sergio, can we have chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast?" Paula asked while he strolled back towards them.

He raised his eyebrows and shoulders at Raquel.

"We don't have chocolate for breakfast everyday," she simultaneously informed him and reminded Paula as she gently gathered Paula's hair in her fist and methodically detangled it. "It's our breakfast for special occasions. And _this_—our very first morning in the Philippines—definitely qualifies as special."

"Yay!" Paula cheered with a wiggle of delight on Raquel's lap.

"I would love nothing more than to make chocolate chip pancakes for you Paula, but we don't have all the ingredients..." Sergio lamented, coming to a stop across from them. He finely drummed his fingertips against the countertop as he mulled. "I have sugar and eggs, and I assume we'll need flour, milk, butter and what else..."

"Chocolate chips!" Paula piped up helpfully.

"...yes, how could I forget," he remarked, beaming at Paula, clearly continuing to find her endearing.

"And baking powder," Raquel added.

"I think I know where we can find each of those ingredients, though it'll be a Palawan scavenger hunt..." He raised his forehead at Raquel, evidently wondering what she thought of him framing it as an adventure. She grinned, unable to think of a better way to help Paula feel cared for on the first full day of their new life. He returned her grin, then looked down at Paula. "Are you up for a challenge?"

"Yes!" she squealed. She spun her head around and dramatically widened her eyes. "Mom, we're going on a scavenger hunt!"

"We can visit the _sari-sari_ store—that's what the neighborhood shops are called that sell a little bit of everything. My favorite one is run by three generations of women: a grandma, a mom, and her daughter, who just turned ten."

"Really?" Paula bubbled. "Do you think she'll want to play?"

"You can ask her," he suggested. "We'll see if they have chocolate chips, and if they don't, I bet they'll know who does." He reached towards the back of Raquel's hand; she felt an intoxicating rush as he tenderly stroked her skin. "Can you drive a motorbike?"

"Of course," she affirmed, her heart warm and full and hopeful.

"In that case," he spoke as his dimples emerged. "I have a plan."

* * *

"Mom, are you sure you're okay?" Raquel asked nervously, looking to her left at the second parked motorcycle, which Sergio was straddling and steadily holding upright—his sandaled feet on the ground, his hands on the handlebars.

"What do you mean? I feel ten years younger already!" Her mother cheekily lifted her shoulders and flashed a rakish grin while her arms encircled Sergio from behind. Handsome as ever, Sergio was wearing an all-white Philippine _barong_, which he'd fittingly explained was the local equivalent of a shirt and tie. The untucked collarless linen featured a subtle embroidered design that air could pass through, so to Raquel's eyes, he looked more relaxed than usual, which made her intrinsically happy.

"Mom, clasp your wrists like I showed you," Raquel directed, pointedly watching her impish mother until she complied.

Sergio smiled kindly beneath his helmet, glancing over his shoulder as much as he could as Raquel's mom gripped him tighter, as instructed.

He looked up into Raquel's eyes. "I'll take good care of her," he vowed.

Raquel took a deep breath and nodded, consciously choosing to trust. She was so used to taking care of her mother and Paula alone. Even when she'd been married, Alberto had felt like an outsider at the best of times, and a monster at the worst. So this feeling was entirely new and not entirely comfortable: another adult was her partner in protection.

"And how are you, Paula?" Sergio calmly asked, his gaze shifting down to her daughter, proving he was similarly concerned about Raquel's motorcycle passenger.

Paula was perched between Raquel's legs, her feet dangling on either side of the bike, her spine pressed against Raquel's stomach, her little hands obediently wrapped around the crosspiece of the handlebar, well away from Raquel's grip on the accelerator and brakes. "I'm fine," Paula yipped with a trill Raquel recognized as Paula's attempt to be brave despite anxiety.

Raquel realized that since Paula's helmet kept her face partly hidden from view, it was helpful that Sergio was checking on her from the side. Perhaps he'd noticed an expression of quiet consternation—_p__erhaps coparenting with a true partner could be amazing after all. _"Sweetie, what would make you feel safer?" Raquel cooed, bracing the balls of her feet against the concrete so she could scoot her hips back, in case Paula wanted to slide farther away from the front wheel.

"I'm okay, Mom," Paula piped up matter-of-factly. "It's normal to be nervous the first time you do a new thing."

Raquel laughed lovingly, her heart swelling with pride. Her daughter was developing such a healthy relationship to learning and growth. Raquel _did_ consciously praise her for hard work, making mistakes, trying new things, and taking action in spite of fear; instead of fixating—like many parents—on achievement.

"Very true, Paula," Sergio affirmed with what sounded like surprise and admiration. He met Raquel's eyes and nodded assuringly, conveying that Paula looked securely ensconced.

Raquel twisted the key to start her engine. He started his, too.

"Market first?" he verified as their engines revved, side-by-side.

It was the plan they'd set earlier when the two of them had scooted off together, briefly leaving her mom and Paula at home, so they could pick up three helmets and another motorcycle from the rental shop. Raquel had relished the ride—and the excuse for close proximity—brazenly squeezing Sergio from behind as they'd cruised through the streets on their errand. He'd pointed out the difference between bicycle-powered pedicabs and motorbike-powered _tuk-tuks. _He'd taught her the local word for water buffalo, and described that—to some Filipinos—the fierce _carabao_ represented the Philippine work ethic. He'd chuckled at her obvious awe as they were easily passed by Palawan families riding six or seven people to a motorcycle. Whenever they were stopped behind colorful _jeepneys_ picking up livestock and passengers, he'd turn his neck to look back at her, and she'd had the pleasure of ogling his devastatingly gorgeous profile.

His exquisite dimple was entrancing her again now as he peacefully waited for her confirmation of their scavenger hunt itinerary.

"Let's go," she announced, grinning euphorically.

He returned her smile, then released his throttle and zoomed up the empty street, which she'd strolled down for the first time just yesterday. She accelerated and followed—satisfied to see her mom's feet safely balanced on the pegs of Sergio's bike. She was also content to feel Paula sitting still—her little head perky, her neck alert—as she scanned her surroundings. She noticed Paula's eyes land on the neighborhood sentinel dog, whose tongue was hanging, ribs heaving, as he watched them drive past.

Raquel turned sharply, trailing Sergio up the narrow alleyway with the concrete tenement housing on the right and the wall to an expat compound on the left. The resident pair of hens swerved out of their path and ducked into a doorway. Sergio signaled with his hand that he was going to stop before turning from the shaded alley onto the busy road.

As they carefully merged into the vibrant bustling stream of pedestrians, slow-moving horned _carabao_, and swerving pedicab cyclists with their decorated sidecars, Raquel appreciated that Sergio was a competent driver, swiveling his neck left and right, observantly navigating around two women haggling over the price of a neon green basin, then around a man prodding a pair of fattened pigs he was likely about to sell.

Raquel usually hated being the last one in a convoy. In this case, not only was it practical—since Sergio knew his way around and she'd literally just arrived—but it also gave her the ability to keep an eye on the three most important people in her life: Paula was safely nestled against her chest, between her arms; her laughing septuagenarian mother was up ahead, excitedly pointing at shops while Sergio, thankfully, seemed to be repeatedly calling back, reminding her to hold on tightly.

Then, there was Sergio—who she thought she'd never see again. 

At this time yesterday she was disembarking from the surreptitious Malaysian fishing boat she’d stealthily chartered from Borneo—a heavy backpack on her back, her mother and daughter’s hands in hers. She’d trekked across the world to find him, yet wasn’t sure if she was a year too late. And now, he too was in her field of vision as they wound their way through the Philippine streets.

This was all she needed, all she wanted. _These three human beings were her tribe._

Sometimes it takes years to find one's family. If there was one thing she knew, _this_ was hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm particularly curious to hear what you think of the Raquel backstory elements this chapter. What did you think of her reflections on her traumatic career in law enforcement? How did you feel about her brief foray into revolutionary idealism during her gap year in Portugal?


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, friends. How are you? I hope wherever you are in the world, you and your loved ones are safe and healthy. Please take care of yourselves and stay connected to others. We're all in this together. <3 <3 <3
> 
> I hope this chapter brings you a bit of distraction and enjoyment. You are awesome.
> 
> Stay in touch if you have the energy to. I'd love to hear from folks.

Raquel took a deep breath of the humid nighttime air while appreciating the hum of the motorbike engine and the wind rustling the palms that densely lined both sides of the unlit road. Her bare arms relished the smoothness of Sergio's pineapple silk shirt as she gripped him from behind and they whipped through the jungle night. She peered over his shoulder at the asphalt strip that wound into the darkness, instantly mesmerized by the solitary beam cast by their motorbike.

She dared to unclasp her wrists—feeling a thrill as she broke her own rule—her greedy fingers kneading his chest, then his abs, unable to stop herself from indulging in the privacy of this northward drive. Pleasure radiated off him at her touch, and even though she had no way of seeing his face, she could _feel_ him grinning with contentment that mirrored hers. A delicious heat reignited in her lower abdomen, proving her desire was insatiable. If they hadn't been wearing helmets, she knew she'd be kissing the nape of his neck and nibbling the back of his ear, feeding her hunger, expressing her affection.

The grove of trees to their left thinned momentarily, exposing the expansive inky sea. Moonglow shimmered across its choppy surface, stretching from the distant horizon to the blinking white eyelash breaking against the shore. She treasured the cooling breeze on her skin as it wicked away the sweat from making love all evening. They'd taken full advantage of having the house to themselves for the first time in the three weeks since she'd arrived. Their conversations had been punctuated by their orgasms, the cadence and variety of their time together a perfect microcosm of why he was everything she needed: they’d waxed philosophical about systemic oppression, social change, and historic precedent; and they'd made love repeatedly, tenderly bringing one another to the brink of ecstasy, loudly cresting the peak, then, after a short rest at base camp, unhurriedly ascending again.

She tilted her neck back as they flew up the coast, gazing above Sergio's head at the increasingly familiar night sky, inviting awe to wash over her like she did every clear night on Palawan. Without city lights, the generously luminescent moon and the humbling canopy of the milky way were welcome companions that regularly left her breathless, stunned with gratitude for her new life. She laughed—her sound carried away by the breeze—as she reflected on how even today's practical tasks had been enjoyable. They'd wanted her to be able to recite all the credit union accounts he'd established around the world. Midway through the memorization session, she'd roguishly pointed out that sensory stimulation would strengthen her neural synapses and make future recall more likely; he'd grinned and nodded, then scooted closer and passionately obliged—kissing her collarbone, licking her nipple, fingering her clit—as she etched each pseudonym and string of numbers in memory. With Alberto, merging finances had been stressful. With Sergio, despite the high stakes, all she felt was ease. Perhaps it stemmed from the mutual respect and the ways in which they'd already put their lives in each other's hands. She felt absolute trust _in_ him and felt absolutely trusted _by_ him; as rash as it sounded, she knew they were partners for life.

Now, she scooched forward, pressing her pelvis even harder against him as he began making the curve inland, away from the ocean, towards the heart of the _barangay, _the local village.

Her chest rose—breasts pressing against his back—as her lungs filled with the damp textured air. It was heavy with the scent of flowers that mysteriously bloomed at night. Nestled under the towering palms on either side of the road were small concrete houses, each one dark and shuttered. The dwellings first appeared sporadically, then consistently, as the stereo bass of dance music became audible, then unavoidable. The decibels rose rapidly as they zoomed through the dusky overgrowth. A group of teenagers strolled their direction on the right shoulder of the road, laughing and teasing one another, drinking from a shared bottle, miraculously not tripping in their oversized flip-flops. A single house to her left had its lights on; the bright colors of a garish gameshow caught her attention through the glassless window as they passed. A young man with a plastic plate loaded precariously high with food was headed for the house, perhaps bringing dinner to an immobile resident.

They sailed by the two businesses—both closed for the night—which were usually the hub of local activity: the eponymous gasoline and vehicle repair shop, "_Glyceria's_," and, of course, Daling's unmarked _sari-sari_ store. When they'd stopped in this morning to give Paula and Nani time to play, Daling had warmly invited them to tonight's fiesta for the town's patron saint, saying it was the perfect opportunity to introduce them to everyone in the village, including the mayor and teachers. Raquel and Sergio had both declined so quickly, Daling had raised her eyebrows. She had no way of knowing they frequented her rural store—not just because her daughter and Paula had become fast friends—but because they were crafting a low profile existence. Between Daling's tiny shop and the homegrown connections of Daling's mother, Andat, they'd been able to procure every good and service they'd needed, all while deftly avoiding the modern video-surveilled shopping centers of Puerto Princesa. Raquel knew that if INTERPOL ever came calling, village mayors would be the first points of contact; they'd flash photos of Sergio—maybe even of him kissing her in The Hanoi—and their idyllic life would be over. Of course, none of that could be explained to Paula, who had begged with clasped fingers to attend the fiesta; Nani had watched, then followed suit, their big eyes and matching pouts breaking Raquel's heart. Raquel's mom had harrumphed and called her and Sergio _killjoys_, then had turned to Daling, announcing that she and Paula would love to come.

Sergio decelerated as a row of fifty parked motorbikes came into view up ahead on the left. Cooking-fire smoke hitched itself to the sticky air, transporting the aroma of roasting meat into Raquel's nostrils. A dog trotted across the empty road in front of them, trying to act nonchalant as it beelined for the source of the smell: the open-air concrete basketball court hosting tonight's _barangay_ fiesta.

Raquel craned her neck around Sergio's back as they neared the six floodlights that starkly illuminated the concrete slab. The celebration looked like a diorama come-to-life, inset in the otherwise black night. A hundred people were dancing to the blaring music, while another hundred were talking and eating, sitting on a hodgepodge collection of plastic and metal chairs, scattered around the perimeter of the court. Joyous good-natured cackles spiked loudly over the lively buzz of neighborly conversation and the squeals of children playing. She knew it was rationally impossible to hear her daughter amidst the crowd, but she kept imagining she heard Paula's giggle. The aural chimera was probably a physiological response to the anticipation of reuniting with her child.

Sergio turned his head to the left, scanning the unmoving fleet of ragtag motorbikes, each one tucked neatly beside the next. He was obviously looking for a slot to slide into. Raquel tapped his shoulder, then pointed to the far end of the row, past the glow of the last floodlight. He nodded with comprehension for the extra security measure and scooted ahead, then turned into the shadows and cut the engine. He planted his sandaled feet on the ground, anchoring the bike for her to climb off.

She didn't move.

He twisted his neck sideways to  glance back at her as much as he could, likely enjoying her arms around him as much as she enjoyed holding him. He grinned knowingly—_gorgeously_—his dimple dazzling her as it always did. Since the first night they'd made love in his decoy hangar and she'd laid in his arms, studying his profile, she'd decided his smile had the look of an underused expression: one she wanted him to experience more often. As luck would have it, she seemed to bring it out of him. Every day for the past twenty-three, she'd seen it more.

He removed his hand from the right handgrip and reached back to caress her thigh with his strong fingers, assuring her that he would stay like this forever if they could. They needed to pick up her mom before anyone got too tired, since they were going to ride home three adults to a bike. They also needed to deliver Paula's overnight bag, which was stowed in the bike seat; Raquel had packed it with her child's stuffed rabbit and favorite pajamas so Paula's first sleepover on Palawan would feel homey.

Raquel sighed and let go of Sergio's torso, slipping her Birkenstocks onto the compacted dirt, then unclasping her chinstrap while appreciating his graceful dismount. He returned her smile while unstrapping his helmet, then held out his hand for hers. As he spun and hung their headgear on the handlebars, she admired his ass in his white linen pants. Peering past him at the row of motorbikes and unsecured helmets, she realized that at a village event where everyone knew everyone, theft must not be of concern.

Reflexively, she reached for Sergio's fingers at the same time he reached for hers. They wordlessly walked back towards thecrowd. Everything on the court was bright and in focus, while they remained safely cloaked in darkness. She noticed the near end of the court was lined by smokey grills, white plumes rising up towards the backboard. A dozen energetic folks of all ages bravely turned skewers with bare fingers, and sliced meat off a giant glistening pig, suspended from a grease-drenched spit. The intense smell of charred meat was offset by the faint aroma of sweet sticky rice wafting through the air.

As they slowly approached, they firmly gripped one another's hands like they did every chance they got: whether running errands by day or ambling together at sunset while her mom admired the sea from a few paces away, holding her windblown sunhat on her head and calling enthusiastically to her granddaughter to come look at an interesting shell at her feet, Paula lapping them all, running ahead, then falling back, collecting sandy artifacts, then returning them ceremoniously to the surf. Now, Raquel felt  Sergio slip his right hand out of hers and slide his arm around her back, pulling her tightly against his side. She'd learned he was too self-conscious for public displays of affection, but since they were slinking in the shadows anyway, perhaps he felt emboldened. Feeling herself grin like an adolescent, she slid her arm around him too, squeezing his side covetously while he stroked her waist with his thumb.

The wind suddenly gusted towards them. She inhaled the thick smoke of blackened chicken and chicharron cracklings, her eyes watering instantly. Wincing and coughing, she tugged Sergio to the right, out of the smokey haze, pulling him up onto the slanted earth embankment that skirted the long side the court. Whenever they drove by during the day, she'd noticed this gradual incline thinly blanketed in wild foliage was where kids and adults sat to watch games. Apparently, the only people interested in the unlit slope tonight were five lounging teenagers, taking turns attempting pop-and-lock moves with varying degrees of success, breaking into peals of laughter while they rolled on their backs, clutching their bellies. Raquel was confident the teens were sufficiently self-absorbed and wouldn't notice her and Sergio strolling their direction.

As they slowly ambled along the earthen ridge, Raquel searched the buoyant, noisy fiesta for her mom, Paula, and Daling. She felt like a theatergoer enjoying the anonymity of the darkened audience, her date's arm cozily wrapped around her while she scanned the concrete stage below, which was flooded in white light. She noticed a row of plastic folding tables paralleled the meat-cooking area and housed dozens of dented aluminum trays that were designed to be disposable yet had lost their sheen from repeated reuse. On one table, trays were dedicated to receiving meat as it came off the grills. On another table, trays contained heaping piles of white rice and soggy spaghetti swimming in disconcertingly artificial red sauce. The busiest table featured dwindling stacks of crispy _lumpia_; each tray of fried rice-paper rolls was a unique shade of golden brown. A steady stream of kids and adults casually nabbed one or two at a time, each person plucking from a stack of their choice. Although she couldn't tell what was inside each roll, she guessed they were made by different neighbors, each of whom served a niche, filling their _lumpia_ with either cheese, vegetables, or meat. She watched half a dozen kids unanimously agree to pause their game of chase so they could load up their fistsbefore resuming their run. Paula and Nani weren’t among them, but Raquel kept her eyes on the brood in case they were headed back to wherever her daughter might be.

The kids zigzagged back through the crowd, past adults who were dancing and talking, expertly avoiding getting bonked by boisterous elbows. The playful pack made their way to the opposite end of the court under the other basket, where drinks and sweets were spread on a similar set of folding tables. Like a herd descending on a watering hole, the youngsters surrounded the soda table from all sides, helping themselves to the orange, clear, and black fizzy liquids. The two biggest kids helped the smallest ones by carefully pouring from the three-liter bottles into the red plastic cups held by eager little hands. It was heartwarming—_and relieving!_—to see younger kids being taken care of by older ones, instead of being bullied, like Paula had experienced back in Spain.

It made Raquel wonder what adult behaviors kids were patterning themselves after in the Madrid suburbs versus this rural Philippine village. Maybe part of what kids picked up on in her old Spanish neighborhood was the hierarchical economic striving of their parents, whose worldviews were rooted in insidious gender norms that labeled _men as providers_ and _women as caretakers_. Raquel had noticed that at least half the businesses on Palawan appeared to be women-owned and women-run. She knew her sample size was small, yet, from what she'd observed, it seemed normal here for women, trans, and third gender folks to be entrepreneurial orchestrators of commerce, just like it was normal for men to clean, care for children, and express a range of emotion. As if to punctuate her point, three men sitting on folding chairs broke into high-pitched giggles, their unselfconscious voices rising up over the din of the crowd. Raquel imagined that at Paula's old school, kids were acting out their restrictive conditioning and zero-sum fears through power plays on the playground.

Now, she watched the gang of uniquely self-actualized children speedily munch their fistfuls of _lumpia_ and gulp down their soda as if they were at a Formula One pitstop. As they finished, they immediately reached for the treats wrapped in banana leaves that were piled high on one of the dessert tables. A nonbinary bigger kid was listening to two littler ones, who were pointing and requesting a cylindrical and square bundle, respectively. After handing out the leaf-wrapped sticky rice, the entire pack devoured their glutinous goodies with singular focus, one-by-one stepping off the concrete slab into the shadows to throw their gummy greenish-brown palm-frond wrappers into the overgrowth. Beside the sweets table, Raquel noticed that four mismatched stereo speakers were wired together with chaotic precision, impressively responsible for the bass reverberating through the jungle.

"Raquel," Sergio uttered with shock, his feet freezing, causing her to stop moving, too. Heart racing, she reached instinctively for her non-existent holster. She followed his gaze. _Her shoulders relaxed immediately._ She realized—with a shake of her head—that her career had trained her to treat any startle response as something to defend. "Your mom..." he marveled.

Raquel's mom was in the middle of the court, dancing with the carefree bounce of a twenty-year-old. She was beaming at her equally lithe dance partner: a white-haired, chestnut-toned Filipino man her age, whose broad, contagious smile was just as genuine as her mom's. Their hands were touching loosely, occasionally coming apart—as one of them spun away in a springy solo flourish—then seamlessly reconnecting as they glided back together. Their light-footed style was so similar; they appeared so in sync. They had more pep in their step than the circle of tweens and younger couples nearby. 

The song sped up. The tweens started jumping; other couples accelerated their steps. Without missing a beat and without needing to speak, her mom's right fingers and the fellow's left interlaced so they were palm-to-palm. Her mom's other hand landed comfortably on the fellow's shoulder; he relaxedly placed his on her lower back. Their synchronized hips moved smoothly, steps uncannily well matched. If Raquel hadn't known any better, she'd swear they'd been dance partners for decades.

"Your jaw is literally hanging open," Sergio amusedly whispered, stroking her waist as they watched, side-by-side and stationary. "What are you thinking?" he inquired curiously.

"I haven't seen her like this in years..." Raquel trailed off, struck with gratitude, yet again, that her mom's dementia had been kept at bay since arriving in the Philippines. Maybe replacing the Madrid pollution with Pacific Ocean air was slowing the neurodegeneration. Perhaps the stimulation of a new environment was keeping her mind agile, while the peaceful, positive energy of their loving household provided serene routine. "I mean, she's always been upbeat, but just look at her..."

"It's like she's floating," he filled in, helping complete her thought as the song ended and a slower number came on.

"Do you know who that is?" Raquel asked, her heart growing heavy as she processed the implications of her talkative mother making friends.

"I've never seen him before."

"Should we be worried?" she raised soberly, turning her neck to look up at Sergio.

"I think your mom is old enough to not need a chaperone," he teased, smiling sweetly.

She solemnly stared into his attentive brown eyes. "I'm worried, dear," she confessed. "We're accidentally making connections, even friends..." She glanced towards the court, noticing her mom and the fellow were now dancing cheek-to-cheek. Gravely, she returned her eyes to Sergio's. "We're stumbling into community instead of cordoning ourselves off."

His smile fell. His eyes flickered in the moonlight, caught between affection and concern. "It's true," he stoically acknowledged. "Every relationship is a potential failure point."

"It's not just about every person who can identify us," she reminded them of what they already knew. "It's about anyone who that person knows." Loosening her grip on his side, she stepped in front of him so they were face-to-face. She reached around him with her other arm too, pulling her body against his, then tilting her neck back so she could meet his gaze.  "It only takes one person in Puerto Princesa to see a picture or read a description, then mention it to someone from this village who thinks, _I know a Spanish family that lives outside of town_."

His pupils quivered. "The risks are exponential, not linear," he concurred in a low voice.

She hugged him tightly, wishing she could keep him safe in her embrace forever. If there was one thing she understood about a vindictive institution that had been shamed in front of its public, it was that Sergio wouldn't survive custody. An _accident_ would happen before letters could be smuggled out of a prison cell or polemics could be delivered from a defense stand. The Spanish powerbrokers didn't want a public backlash, much less an economic revolution. "We can't stay here..."  she realized. Her voice cracked.

"Raquel..." he entreated plaintively, shaking his head.

"...I'm not letting you get caught," she vowed, clenching her jaw. She felt tears spring up out of nowhere; they started to slide down her cheeks.

He reached for her face with both hands; she closed her eyes, feeling his fingers gently grasp her jaw, feeling his thumbs delicately rub her tears into her skin. She blinked open her eyelids; he shook his head again, imploring. "You and I took all this into account," he pointed out. "We planned out our life here knowing the risks." He moved his hands off her face to the back of her neck, which he caressed, soothingly. "We can't cut off Paula from other kids. She needs to develop her social skills as she grows up, like I never did." He ruefully lifted one side of his mouth. Every night of Raquel's first week on the island, they'd whispered into the wee hours, holding one another in their little bed, weighing their options, quantifying threats, and ultimately deciding that they'd tutor Paula at home, yet would find a secluded house not too far from a rural town so she could make friends with kids her age. When Paula and Nani had hit it off, Raquel and Sergio had narrowed their search, quickly finding the rustic home they'd been waiting to close on for the past few days. While the seller assembled the paperwork, they'd been hunting for a boat so they could ferry themselves to the hidden beach off the northwest coast where the house and surrounding land were sheltered from the nearest road by thick jungle.  _But no jungle was thick enough to prevent a well-meaning local from directing INTERPOL to their door._

"We made a mistake letting Paula and Mom get too close to people here..." she insisted emphatically, anxiety rising.

"Raquel..."

"...we won't make that mistake again. Let's move to the southern tip of the island..."

"Raquel..."

"...we'll never come back to this village; we'll start over as true recluses this time..."

"Raquel," he pleaded. His eyes glistened with gratitude and love and what looked like powerlessness. "We can't do that to them." Although his pupils were locked on hers, his gaze became distant, like he was fixating on something in his mind's eye. "Maybe it's not possible to live sequestered and still really _live_," he whispered reverently, his hushed tone likely a way of paying his respects to the monastic doctrine he was laying to rest. "I can hear my brother saying: _Life is irrepressible, inescapable. Life finds a way to draw you back in, whether you intend it to or not._” His chin trembled, causing him to appear both soothed and heartbroken by the memory of Andrés.

He peered over her head. "Just look at your mom..." She turned her neck and saw her mom leaning into her dance partner. The fellow was saying something into her ear with an easy smile; they started laughing together, but not out of discomfort. They were both guileless, comfortable in their own skin, sharing an inside joke like lifelong friends. "You said it yourself. _You haven't seen her like this in years_." Raquel returned her eyes to Sergio's. He lovingly slid his palms down her back, and began massaging the curve of her spine with tender attention. "We owe it to your mom and Paula to create the conditions for them to enjoy _their_ lives, too." 

Raquel swallowed and nodded, knowing he was right. Her heart swelled with appreciation for how he was advocating for her mother and daughter, even though it meant putting himself in harm's way. His selfless commitment to their freedom and happiness was a striking contrast to Alberto's possessive dominionism. 

"I just want to protect you..." she whispered. Her neck remained tilted back so she could look up into Sergio's soulful eyes.

"I know."

She choked back tears of anticipatory regret, unable to shake the feeling that staying near this little village  meant leaving the door open to danger. "...but there's no way to avoid risk completely," she accepted quietly.

"I've learned that the hard way," he admitted, his eyes welling with grief. She'd discovered during these past three weeks that his suddenly mournful countenance meant he was rueing his brother's death. She took a supportive, exaggerated deep breath and watched his chest rise in response. She squeezed him securely, hoping to ground him, trying to keep him away from the hazardous precipice of guilt. He blinked down at her, his eyes shimmering with thanks, confirming he would be okay. 

He resumed rubbing her back, appreciatively.  


She smiled warmly. "If we're buying that house and settling here, let's just be honest about the risk," she gently reasoned. "When a village is small enough to fit on a basketball court..." She angled her head towards the crowd. "...there _are_ no secrets,  only common knowledge. And with my mom tearing up the dance floor tonight..." The sides of his mouth turned upward at her attempt at levity. "...we can assume that everyone in town will know about us by tomorrow."

He nodded with short stiff movements. "Assessing risk means accurately evaluating consequence and calculating probability," he affirmed softly. "I agree that  if anyone from this village hears about a Spanish fugitive that fits my description, it's _game over_."

"So what's the probability," she rhetorically posed, "of someone here being exposed to that message? I'd expect your INTERPOL inspector to start their search in Central or South America, mistakenly assuming that you'd want to live where Spanish would be useful. If _I_ was your inspector..." She slyly winked. "...I'd realize the brilliant mind behind the greatest heist of all time wouldn't head for the obvious..." 

He smiled bashfully, which he did whenever she stated a simple fact about him, like how he was _remarkably__ intelligent_, _devastatingly sexy_, or _profoundly kind_. The other night, while they lay in each other's arms, he'd let her know that it was the first time in his life that he'd truly cared what someone else thought. He'd described how he felt weaker than ever, slavishly dependent on how she felt about him. Yet, paradoxically, he also felt safer than ever, recognizing that he'd spent forty years as a lone wolf, alone in his den, wandering mateless, without anyone to plan out the day with or with whom to share the night watch. His honesty had melted her heart, and she'd responded by making love to him, touched by the baring of his soul. She felt like she solved a mystery that night: compassion and attraction were the flint and steel of their relationship, and honesty was the accelerant. Starting at The Hanoi when she'd told him about Alberto's abuse, through his tearful confessions in the Toledo attic, to their heavy island conversations about his family and hers—their candor with one another was why a single week in their lives felt like the equivalent of a year.

"...If it was me leading your INTERPOL investigation," she thoughtfully continued her frank risk analysis, "I'd start my search in Southeast Asia. I'd be tempted by the nooks and crannies of Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar but I'd know that in nations with less infrastructure, my resources wouldn't stretch as far, comparatively; I'd always be afraid you were one step ahead, lining pockets and hacking through the underbrush faster than my bureaucratic forces could pivot..."

"Is it okay that I love hearing you describe your chess moves aloud?"  he interrupted in a deep timbre. His handsome, sheepish smile emerged.

"Are you saying you find strategic planning hot?" she asked directly, raising her eyebrows.

"Unequivocally," he lustily professed.

"What are the chances?" She felt herself break into a rakish grin. "Me too."

His eyes sparkled with humor. Yet again, she marveled at how they were able to enjoy one another, even as they engaged in the most serious of conversations. He cleared his throat as if trying to clear his desire. "You were saying, Inspector," he prompted huskily, still stroking her back, just even more ardently.

"I'd prioritize Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, The Philippines, and Vietnam, in that order," she rattled off while contemplating her tactics. "To stretch my budget as far as it could go, I'd covertly establish barebones headquarters in each country, prepare the media outlets with reward announcements, and train local police forces to serve as my boots on the ground. To reduce the likelihood of you scurrying across a border, just beyond the reach of my searchlight, I'd launch the operation simultaneously across the region, achieving blanket coverage instantly. By flicking on the floodlights everywhere at once, you'd be left with few dark corners to slip into..."

"Thank god you're on my side," he seductively intoned, causing her to snort. "Since you are..." His gravelly voice was stimulating her senses. "...I think it's unlikely another inspector would take that approach."  She felt his hands slide up the back of her shirt and begin caressing her bare skin. Her eyelids fluttered uncontrollably at the intoxicating touch of his fingers. He stroked her lower back with the firmness and rhythm he'd learned to use against her clit when rapidly undoing her.

"Unlikely but still possible," she refuted breathily. She tried to concentrate on her inhales and ignore the delicious heat igniting between her legs. "I can think of a few ex-colleagues who wouldn't underestimate you, and who'd be creative enough to design unconventional ops."

"And I'm willing to take that low-probability chance. If for no other reason..." He flashed his dazzling smile, evidently trying to deliver a convincing final argument. "...than to see what happens between your mom and her new friend."

She laughed aloud, releasing the exquisite anguish of love under threat. 

He laughed too, clearly delighted by her reaction, his dimples deepening by the second.  _He was so fucking gorgeous and he didn't even know it. _

Unwrapping her arms from his middle, she swiftly reached for the back of his neck with both hands, unable to contain her passion any longer, desperate to express her wild love for him. As she  craned up on her toes, canting her head, he leaned down, obligingly. Her eyelids fell shut.

She felt his lips touch hers and heard them both muffle a moan. His open mouth moved confidently, equaling her rabidity, perhaps emboldened by their private lovemaking all afternoon. Usually he was so quiet, but today when they had the house to themselves, she'd been gratified to hear him murmur affectionate incantations into the tender skin of her lower abdomen and inner thigh; he'd also groaned lustfully in a muted baritone as she rode him, his resonant sounds of arousal the perfect accompaniment to her orgasmic crescendos, deepening her pleasure, rocketing her higher. She hoped that over time, her unrestrained cries would spur him to unleash his voice, too. Her working theory was that subconsciously, he was constantly apologizing for existing; he felt guilty for being a burden to his mother, father, and older brother, believing their lives would've been easier if he hadn't been born. It's why he was skilled at being silent, and why he  chronically hunched his shoulders instead of standing at his full height: he wanted to be unobtrusive and take up as little space as possible. If her psychological assessment was accurate, the irony, of course, was that his radically disruptive heist had stemmed from a desire to not bother a soul. She had secretly decided that being his partner meant it was her job to help him learn that he deserved to exist. She could hardly believe she had the sublime privilege of guiding him to explore his untapped reservoir of joy.

Even now—during this steamy wanton kiss in the muggy Palawan night—she could hear him humming lightly and feel him making progress, giving himself permission to enjoy life—and enjoy her. She dug her fingers into the nape of his neck and undulated against his body, which, after three glorious weeks, she was getting to know so well. As expected, his shaft stiffened while she ground against him, instantly sending sympathetic shockwaves of ecstasy through her core.  "Raquel," he mumbled against her lips. "It's not _that_ dark out here." He was right, and yet, his complicit palms pressed desirously against her lower back, disregarding his own cautionary announcement, instead assisting her forceful hips in rolling against his hardened member, his strong, sexy fingers supporting the swells of her spine.  His tongue thrust forward, venturing into her mouth—and all at once she discovered that although she adored his timidity, she found his brazenness electrifying, too. She clutched his neck tightly, heard herself whimper, and felt herself grow unconscionably wet. 

_ Rhapsodic delirium overtook her senses.  _

_ Coherent thought evaporated and gave no sign of return. _

_ The sum total of the universe was her body and his, her _ _ consciousness singularly aware of him nibbling her ear,  _ _kissing her neck, suckling her shoulder, and now doing it all again with accelerating fervor, guiding her expertly, startlingly, dangerously close to the edge..._

"Sergio..." she gasped, surprised by how sultry her voice sounded.  "I can't..." _The graze of his beard. _"I can't..." _The feel of his lips! _"I can't believe I'm saying this..." She forced herself to speak despite the cries of her needy body, demanding she flout decorum and public decency. "...you're turning me on too much." 

She released the back of his neck with her fingers and felt him lift up his head. 

She opened her eyes and met his adoring, hungry gaze. His dancing eyes were alight with joy.

Her chest rose and fell, a mirror image of his, as they both caught their breath.  They laughed silently at themselves while they recovered from the shock of their fervid, reckless indiscretion.

She noticed the hair on one side of his head was sticking out conspicuously where she must have grasped and mussed it without even realizing it. She slowly reached up and smoothed it down while he grinned contentedly at the domestic touch of her fingertips.

_Pop-pop-pop_

_Smell of sulfur and charcoal._

_Bang-bang_

_Gunfire. 180 degrees behind her._

She shoved Sergio to the ground with all her strength. Taken by surprise, he fell easily. She cushioned her fall and rolled sideways off him, putting herself between him and the gunfire. She stared back at the noise to assess the scene.

_Shame flowed over her like a scalding wave._

The five teenagers up ahead on the embankment were setting off fireworks. The _popping_,_ banging _gunpowder was dangerous—but not in the ways her reptile brain had interpreted. As if to underscore the ridiculousness of her actions, a multicolored firework erupted overhead, causing everyone in the crowd to _oooooh_ with delight.

"You okay there?" Sergio's face was over hers. He'd propped himself up on his elbow and was leaning over her to check.

"Oh my god," she blurted, covering her mouth with her hand and rolling onto her back. "I'm sorry." Her face was burning; she felt mortified with embarrassment. "I'm so sorry." Her hand moved to her forehead, her pinkie partially covering her sight. 

"You have nothing to be sorry about," he countered, smiling kindly. "You never need to apologize for trying to save someone's life."

_She could have injured him for no reason! _"Are you okay? Did I hurt you?" she burst with worry, removing her hand from her face so she could get a clearer look at him.

"I seem to be intact," he assured her; his smile broadened. He reached for her cheek with one hand, and gently used his fingers to move her unruly hair out of her mouth, then away from her eyes. "Thank goodness we weren't over concrete."

She began to giggle absurdly, releasing her adrenaline overload, letting her spring-coiled spine relax back against the earthen slope. "I think I'm suffering from emotional whiplash," she explained as tears of laughter stung her eyes. He chuckled sweetly, his emotional mirroring helping her to unwind. By all normal measures, she was making a fool out of herself, yet she was feeling less ashamed by the second, thanks to the mirthful affection emanating from his eyes. His face continued hovering over hers, as a series of white, purple, and pink flowery fireworks exploded and expanded on the black canvass behind his head; the town's _oooohs_ and _ahhhhs_ chorally underscored each bloom. She reached up to run her thumb against his soft bearded cheek.

"Does this happen often?" he asked with amusement and patient curiosity. Her hand stilled against the side of his face. He twisted his chin slightly, without taking his eyes off hers, and lovingly kissed the palm of her hand.

"You mean," she confirmed with a grimace, "do I often react to innocent noises by knocking my loved ones to the ground?"

"Well, yes," he playfully replied, eyes twinkling. "It would be good for me to know so I can be prepared. Wearing kneepads and a helmet is a small price to pay to get to spend every day with you."

She laughed, then regained her breath. "I'll teach you to cushion your falls," she proposed, then resumed stroking his cheek, now with all her fingertips. His eyelids fluttered, revealing that he relished her touch.

"So it sounds like I should take that as a _yes_," he concluded with a beautiful grin.

"I do have a history..." she divulged, then snickered. "...of knocking my partners to the ground. I once tackled Ángel in a law office parking lot when a vintage car backfired." She mentally reminisced about how her friend had lied to protect her from the vultures at the station who were always eager to devour any story about her. Ángel had told everyone he'd gotten drunk and had fallen back on his head, and that's why he had six new stitches and a patch of hair to regrow. Raquel snapped out of her reverie, noticing Sergio looked concerned. "Are you okay, dear?" Her hand fell still against his face.

"I just didn't know..." He cut himself off with a single shake of his head.

"What? What's wrong?"

"Nothing..." His eyes darted to the side, uncomfortable. "...I just thought...I thought with Ángel it had always been one-sided..." 

"Oh!" she exclaimed, recognizing her words had been imprecise. She reached up with her other hand, cradling his cheeks with both palms, gently turning his face back towards hers. His wary pupils returned hesitantly. "With Ángel, I meant _partner_, as in police partner. Not romantically. Not life partner. Not the space in my heart that you occupy." _She loved Sergio so uniquely, so immeasurably, so unequivocally that it hadn't even occurred to her that he might ever feel threatened._ She knew with certainty that he was the only person she wanted by her side for the rest of her life. She'd had police partners, best friends, even a spouse, and yet she'd never felt anything close to what she felt with him. Theirs was a holistic partnership. They were symbiotically, inextricably entwined, and she wouldn't want it any other way. 

She tugged lightly at the sides of his face and parted her lips, hoping he'd come down for a kiss so she could communicate, _I am with you_. His eyes softened and his lips separated and he began to lean down. She felt his teasing breath grow hotter as he slowly neared her mouth.

"Sergio?" a woman's voice rang out over the background din of fiesta voices and firecrackers.

Sergio's eyes grew wide and Raquel felt hers do the same. He pulled away quickly and sat up on the fern-covered slope. Raquel leaned up on her elbows so she could look down past her toes towards the basketball court below. Her stomach did a somersault as she realized that eighty percent of the faces were staring up at this darkened ridge, watching the teens lighting sparklers and setting off explosions, five meters to their right.

"Raquel!" the voice called again. Raquel noticed the big overhead wave halfway down the long side of the court. Daling was smiling widely, standing beside a table she'd evidently set up for her family and friends. Her mother, Andat, was seated across from her, along with Glyceria, the owner of the engine repair shop. Andat and Glyceria both twisted where they sat so they could look up the slope at her and Sergio. Raquel didn't see Paula or Nani, but two of Glyceria's six children appeared to be playing near the table. "Raquel! Sergio!" Daling yelled even louder as she gestured for them to come down. "What are you two doing up there? Come join us!" she hollered in English.

Sergio raised his arm stiffly and returned one awkward wave; Raquel sat up instantly and lifted her thumb high in the air, hoping it was visible in silhouette so Daling would stop projecting their real names across the court. With a resigned groan, Raquel reminded herself that everyone in town hearing their names didn't matter: they'd already concluded there was no chance of escaping the friendly neighborhood gossip mill. "It's a good thing we already gave up on remaining anonymous here," Raquel quipped as Sergio agilely hopped up to a stand.

Smiling, he extended both hands down towards her. She grabbed his sturdy wrists, then pulled herself to her feet. They dusted off their own and each other's backsides, relying on the moonlight and ambient fireworks to expose whether ferns or reedy plants were hitchhiking in their hair or on their clothes.

"And so much for pseudonyms," he jested lightheartedly as they gave each other a final once over. She laughed and facepalmed, recalling how they'd utterly failed at getting her mom and Paula to refer to their nicknames in public. Their very first morning on the island, when Sergio had sweetly proposed a Palawan scavenger hunt to collect the ingredients for chocolate chip pancakes, Raquel's mom had blown their cover immediately, despite their morning practice session. They'd made the long journey north of the city and were standing in Daling's _sari-sari_ store for the first time. Nani and Paula were eyeing each other shyly from across the concrete room, and Raquel's mom had become fascinated by the long tearable packets of single-use soap, shampoo, and toothpaste that dangled from the ceiling over the checkout counter. Raquel immediately deduced that single-use packets were purchased by people who were living day-to-day, unable to accumulate enough funds for a soap bar, shampoo bottle, or toothpaste tube. Raquel's mom was obliviously fiddling with the colorful strips, drawing attention from the watchful, discerning Andat, who was minding the cash register, and who they hadn't yet befriended. _"Look, Raquel! Shampoo comes in tiny packets here, not bottles__," her mom had called. "Oops, you wanted me to call you something else. What was it? A city. A city in Portugal, right? Porto. No, that doesn't sound right. That doesn't sound like you at all, Raquel! Tee-hee! Can you imagine? Wouldn't that be a provocative nickname!"_

Shaking her head and smiling at the memory, Raquel tried to relax into the fact that she and Sergio had cast their die tonight. They'd chosen to play, deciding the risks were worth it. Now, they were at the mercy of probability. Their odds were based on metrics beyond their control: INTERPOL budgets, the creativity of head inspectors, and the interconnections between the hundreds of townsfolk in this quiet coastal village and the hundreds of thousands in cities nearby.

"You ready?" Sergio warmly asked, his resonant voice pulling Raquel back to the present. He smiled softly and reached out for her hand. She gladly gripped it and squeezed, tighter than necessary, as they walked down the darkened slope towards the brightly lit _barangay_ fiesta.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I appreciate any and all constructive feedback! I'm particularly curious how this chapter felt for you since this is the first one where we jump ahead in time.
> 
> As you'll recall, the first 8 chapters take place in the first 24 hours of Raquel's arrival on Palawan. This is the first chapter where we step ahead a significant amount of time (3 weeks), so I'd love to know how it felt compared to previous chapters, and whether you experienced the best of both worlds: advancement of the story and their relationship, yet, reflective insight into what took place in the intervening time.
> 
> I like giving you real-time dialogue and present-moment scenes, but, in order to not make this the longest fic in history, I figure this technique of stepping ahead, yet filling in the blanks through brief reflections, might be the way the go. What do you think? 
> 
> I'd love to hear whether any of those reflective moments became too long, confusing, uninteresting, or tedious. Any other reactions, feelings, and thoughts are incredibly helpful!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoy it. <3

Sergio noticed that he felt uncannily serene as he and Raquel stepped carefully, hand in hand, down the loamy moonlit slope. 

_Unsa-unsa-unsa-unsa..._

He felt like he was floating in slow motion from one chapter of his life into another—consciously, deliberately, with a full understanding of the risks he was choosing, and why he was choosing them.

_Unsa-unsa..._

Below, the crowded basketball court was flooded in white light. Dancers stood still. Talkers were silent. Eaters chewed methodically without looking at the plastic plates in their hands. All three hundred faces were staring in their direction.  Enraptured, the crowd  _ooohed_ and _ahhhhed_ as a series of fireworks whistled into the air above his and Raquel's heads. 

_Pop-pop-pop-boom!_

The overlapping explosions became cacophonous as the earth became steeper beneath their feet. He gazed at his and Raquel's interlocked fingers, his eyes gliding up her strong arm as she moved ahead of him, leading them down the dark hillside. He tilted his neck back and watched as red fireworks expanded like galaxies, burning matter hurtling chaotically apart, promising infinite inertia, then abruptly halting and falling, piece by defeated piece, dead embers  plummeting unceremoniously to the earth, downward smoke trails the only remnant of past greatness.

_Unsa-unsa..._

He looked worriedly at Raquel as acrid sulfur rained down around them,  checking to see if it was stinging her eyes or hurting her lungs. She glanced back at him with eyebrows raised, apparently checking on his wellbeing, too. He felt his heart accelerate. _Her love was the force he most trusted in the universe. _His shoulder was still sore from catching his fall just minutes ago, when she'd shoved him to the ground, putting herself between him and nonexistent gunfire. 

She canted her head at him dotingly. 

His neck felt warm. _H__e didn't deserve her protection!_

Adorably smug—and apparently satisfied he was okay —she turned back to the ferny downslope and continued navigating their descent, her right hand gently guiding his left.

_ Fizzzzzz...zzz-zzz...zzz..._

The white noise of hissing sparklers tapered to a sputter behind him. He heard the teens cheering the last gasps of  their once-mighty arsenal as the sporadic _crackles_ faded into silence. Couples in the center of the court resumed moving en masse—a rolling sea of townsfolk, rising and falling to the music. Families seated around the perimeter stopped twisting in their direction,  returning their attention to their food and one another as the din of buoyant conversation bubbled up to its pre-fireworks decibel.

_Unsa-unsa..._

The smell of roasted pork and blackened chicken gusted up the hillside, carried by the muggy breeze. He  imagined the charred aroma was overwhelming to most people, while to him, it was a sensory afterthought. Raquel had overtaken his senses for three uninterrupted weeks—her sound, her scent, her taste, her touch—he never wanted to experience life another way. _The timbre of her voice in the next room as she read a bedtime story to Paula. The sweet scent of her skin as she slipped her arms around him from behind while he sliced calamansi and garnished their dinner of fried mackerel. Her hot breath on his clavicle as she luxuriantly collapsed against him, coming astride him for her third and final time, his fingers stroking her sweat-drenched spine while her exhales steadied, then slowed._ The maw of the future was unpredictable, except in its viciousness, so he'd been present every moment, savoring the experience of being alive, knowing each instant was a split second that would never exist again.

Now, steering them down the dusky ridge, Raquel squeezed his hand without looking back, as if she was able to hear his desire to never spend a day apart. He pressed her hand in response and stepped alongside her as the dark earth flattened and they arrived beside the bustling court.

_Unsa-unsa-unsa-unsa..._

She glanced sideways at him warily, perhaps confirming their mutual decision to become known in this little _barangay_.  He nodded, then watched her chest rise and fall as she sighed in agreement. They'd accepted their life would be a series of calculated risks; he believed their duty as guardians was to give Paula and Mariví a chance to make friends, build community, and be happy, while staying one step ahead of abject danger. He'd learned, only recently, that human relationships couldn't be simulated or replaced. Before assembling the gang, he'd thought the literary lions of history were sufficient companions, not knowing the unmatched pleasure of sharing esprit de corps with one's tribe; now that he'd tasted the singular joy of gliding through the world beside Raquel, he couldn't stomach the thought of isolating her mother and daughter, restricting their relationships, and suppressing their right to feel alive. _E__ven if it meant exposing himself to harm._

Raquel's eyes brimmed with anticipatory woe. 

His own eyes stung as he quelled the tears attempting to form. Whenever she radiated sorrow, he couldn't help but cry; when she exuded joie de vivre, his mirror neurons leapt ecstatically. Now, the fear of forced separation was too potent to let himself feel, so he lingered by her side in the safety of the dark, cocooned in their personal bardo. Her pupils remained locked on his, his left hand firmly held by her right. Slowly, the sides of her mouth turned upwards, and he felt his do the same. He matched her grin or perhaps she was matching his. He nodded as she nodded, the simultaneity sparking a shared laugh. She took a deep breath and faced forward. Side by side, they stepped into the light.

_Unsa-unsa-unsa-unsa..._

To their left and right, heads swiveled towards them. Along the perimeter of the court, gaping fiesta-goers were seated on a mismatched collection of neon plastic kids' chairs and dented metal folding chairs. Several families were using overturned buckets as side tables for their plastic plates and cups.  Those who weren't, had risked placing their plates directly on the concrete and were vigilantly shooing away the half dozen scavenging dogs who were loitering in the shadows. One wild-eyed canine darted into the light, spotting an open path to a skewer. The middle-aged skewer-owner was too busy gawking at him and Raquel to notice until the skulking thief was making a getaway, guiltily scampering back to the murk, pursued only by a local expletive and the jealous barks of the rest of the pack.

Sergio realized that Daling was smiling fondly and waving welcomingly from where she sat a dozen family clusters away. Her laugh lines were visible beneath her unpretentious pixie cut; she seemed to be talking about them to her mother, who turned around to look at them, too. He was glad to see Daling sitting relaxedly on a wooden bench, her bare elbows resting on the long folding table she'd set up for her mother and closest friends. Since he'd arrived on Palawan a year ago and begun his daily vigil waiting for Raquel, he'd taken long drives  away from the coordinates at dawn or dusk, before or after passenger boats were likely to dock. This rural _barangay_ up the northwest coast had become his favorite spot.  He liked supporting the local economy—Daling's tiny sundry store and Glyceria's motorbike repair shop—while  avoiding the video-surveilled shopping malls of Puerto Princesa. He'd never seen Daling's _sari-sari_ store closed—likely because her only helpers were her seventy-year-old mother, Andat, and her ten-year-old daughter, Nani—so he was heartwarmed to see her sitting tonight, enjoying a well-deserved break from her business.

_Unsa-unsa-unsa-unsa..._

Pressing Raquel's hand and feeling her grip tighten in return, he used his nine-inch height advantage to weave them between rubbernecking locals, towards  the impressive festival basecamp Daling had established. She’d apparently hauled, from across the street, the two wooden benches that usually sat parallel to one another, lining the walkway to her shop's front door. By day, those benches were where Daling's mother held court with her similarly aged friends. Every time he'd stopped in for supplies, he'd passed the laughing gauntlet of elder community members, a rotating cast of women and men who occupied the outdoor benches, cackling and conversing in their sing-song Visayan dialect, always keeping busy with their hands. They'd shuck sweet corn as they chitchatted, tossing husks into one plastic bucket, and bright yellow cobs into another. They'd speedily grate cassava or mature coconut, generating heaps of shredded white flakes while reminiscing about a friend who'd passed away. One morning, he saw Glyceria walk over from her neighboring repair shop and hire them to scour a disassembled engine with WD-40. Whether preparing food repetitively or meticulously wiping grease off gears, their merriment was a constant. They seemed to tease one another good-naturedly, their running jokes a half-century in the making, their conversations never running dry.

When Raquel had arrived on the island twenty three days ago, he'd led their caravan up the coast to Daling's store—Mariví seated gleefully behind him, Paula seated nervously in front of Raquel. After only two visits, Nani and Paula were referring to each other as friends, Paula climbing eagerly off of Raquel's motorbike and  running off with her grinning pal the moment he and Raquel  cut their engines.  Andat, meanwhile, had watched them warily for weeks, eyeing them as they walked by her lively white-haired gang. Just this week, Andat had subtly gestured to Mariví, wordlessly inviting her to sit; he and Raquel had raised their eyebrows at one another, worried Mariví had been plucked for an inquisition. As they headed inside, they overheard the council of elders introducing themselves to Mariví in English; almost all Filipinos were fluent and Raquel's mom knew enough to get by. Half an hour later, supplies procured, pleasantries exchanged with Daling, he'd paused with his hand on the exit door as laughter erupted out front. He, Raquel, and Daling had all glanced at one another, then surreptitiously gathered by the barred window to peer outside. Mariví was telling an anecdote from her youth in broken English and ribald gestures, holding the attention of Andat and her amused cohort, whose eyes twinkled at the relatability of the tale. Ever since then, whenever he and Raquel parked their pair of motorcycles in front of the store, Paula skipped off with Nani to play in the stream behind the shop, Mariví joined Andat's crew seated out front, and he and Raquel intentionally dawdled,  needlessly perusing Daling's familiar shelves, making as much small talk with Daling as they dared, wordlessly giving Paula and Mariví _more time_.

_Unsa-unsa-unsa-unsa..._

Now, beneath the floodlights of the noisy nighttime fiesta, the two iconic benches provided the perfect seating for Daling's table. As he and Raquel wound through the crowd, he noticed the tabletop was covered with food scraps and forgotten toys, as if an ungainly herd of feasters had hurriedly refueled, then abandoned the oasis to resume their play. He suspected Paula was among those who'd eaten and run, and he hoped Raquel felt similarly assured by the evidence of her recent presence. Daling seemed to be enjoying the relative quiet after the youthful feeding frenzy. She was smiling genially where she sat, languidly  nibbling  sun-dried chunks of _bulad_, casually dipping the salted fish in a shallow dish of vinegar with her thumb and forefinger while she talked with her two tablemates, whose backs were to them. 

Andat had turned her neck their way and had trained her piercing eyes on him and Raquel. The seventy year old continued to stare unabashedly as they approached. The intensity of her gaze unnerved him.  Mariví had managed to earn Andat's trust, but she perhaps hadn't automatically extended it to him and Raquel.

To Andat's right sat the local mechanic, Glyceria, who owned the other primary business in town; she was bouncing her youngest child on her knee in time to the music, keeping him entertained while he watched the dancers and chewed on his chubby fingers. Glyceria adeptly used her free hand to peel a banana leaf off a cylinder of sweet sticky rice. She alternated between feeding herself and giving her baby mini-bites to gum.

"Come sit!" Daling invited them in English, warmly patting the empty bench to her left as they neared.

Raquel smiled, obviously grateful for the sweet welcome as she flowed into the forward position and led him around the table towards Daling.

He wondered if this decision to invite additional risk into their lives would turn out to be good for Raquel, not just for her mother and daughter. He worried that Raquel missed having friends and colleagues. He, on the other hand, had never had a long-term lover, partner, or even best friend. For the first time in his life, he had all three. She was his favorite person to listen to, talk to, and be silent beside. She made him laugh; she helped him cry. She was the person with whom he wanted to do everything; she was the reason he wished it was possible to do nothing—he wanted time to stop and encase them in amber to keep them safe from the wearying past and weathering future.

He felt Raquel drop his hand, and despite his best efforts to not react, the lights and sounds and smells of the fiesta jarringly amped up—becoming brighter, louder, stronger—without the calming somatic overlay of her touch. His sensory dependence on her had never been more clear. Mouth dry, he wondered if he was experiencing addiction.

"Sit. Eat. Enjoy," Andat directed from across the table,  disrupting his trance.

He looked down at Raquel who was gazing at him expectantly, waiting for him to join her on the bench. She patted the empty space to her left. He smiled sheepishly and slid in beside her, immediately scooting so close that his right leg pressed against her left. He felt her hand slip onto his thigh under the table. He was startled by the public display of affection, then realized she was being discreet, amicably greeting Daling, Andat, Glyceria, and the baby with words and eye contact, no one the wiser as her shoulder remained still and she caressed his leg. The glaring lights and blaring sounds instantly softened, her altering presence pleasantly permeating his senses.

"I'm so happy you changed your minds and decided to come," Daling remarked with a friendly smile, pushing a plate of crispy golden-brown _lumpia_ towards the center of the table, so the fried rice paper rolls were within reach of him and Raquel.

"We always _wanted_ to come," Raquel clarified, clearly working hard on her pronunciation. He knew she felt okay about her comprehension of English, but she wasn't confident about her ability to speak it.  "We were busy..." She looked left at him and trailed off, either short of English words or short of plausible explanations for their previous adamance that neither of them could attend. They'd only decided half an hour ago to let themselves be seen at the festival, when they were talking honestly about risk and the inevitable consequences of Paula and Mariví developing relationships.

He cleared his throat to make sure he could enunciate well. "We had some things we had to do first," he corroborated.

Andat smirked and raised her eyebrows at Glyceria;  Glyceria smirked back and nodded. 

_He cringed._ He must have sounded like he was making an excuse.  "Thank you for your help," he expressed earnestly, turning to Daling. "We really appreciate you spending the day with Mariví and Paula. How have they been?"

As Daling recounted the afternoon and Raquel asked follow-up questions about everyone’s wellbeing, including inquiring when Paula had last been seen, he noticed Andat's twinkling eyes were fixated on him. The septuagenarian didn't end her impish gaze, even when she raised her red plastic cup to her lips. She continued staring at him over its rim. The more uncomfortable he felt, the more she smiled as she sipped. The more she smiled as she sipped, the more uncomfortable he felt.  He didn't want to be rude but desperately wanted to look away, not knowing what her teasing grin meant. 

Thankfully, Andat emptied her drink, then broke eye contact, reaching for two clean  cups from the stack at the end of the table. Turning the cups right-side up, she  filled them with the last milky-white contents of a clear unmarked jug, which she'd been guarding by her elbow.  "Here," she demanded, pushing both cups across the table—one in front of him and one in front of Raquel. "Drink."

"No, thank you," he courteously declined, able to smell alcohol rising out of the cup. He gestured definitively by crossing and uncrossing his hands with his palms facing away from him.

"You must replenish your liquids," Andat sternly  insisted, pushing the cups even closer to him and Raquel.  He opened his mouth to respond but Andat laughed heartily, as if she'd just made a joke. Glyceria appeared amused. Daling looked entertained. Raquel seemed as confused as he was but tried to hide it by politely smiling at their companions.

"Have you ever had _tuba_?" Daling asked Raquel kindly, talking over her mother's dwindling chuckles.

"_Tuba..._" Raquel repeated, as if saying the word might dislodge a hidden memory. She shook her head. "No, I haven't."

"It's coconut wine made from the sap of a palm tree. Homemade," Daling explained with an easy smile. "My mom's special recipe."

Raquel wrapped her hand around the cup, reverently. "You made this?" she deferentially asked Andat, clearly wanting to avoid a social slight. 

He didn't mind social slights when it came to safety. He picked up his cup and carefully poured its liquid contents into Raquel's. Everyone looked at him with shock.  "Thank you," he emphasized to Andat, placing his hand over his heart, genuinely touched. "I'm honored you would share your home brew, but I'm driving tonight," he elucidated for the whole table. 

Raquel squeezed his leg with appreciation, sending a validating jolt of energy through him. 

Glyceria nodded at him, then at Raquel, with what seemed like authentic admiration as she bounced her baby on her knee. "Your husband is so responsible," Glyceria marveled to Raquel.

_His breath caught. _It was the first time he'd heard someone mistakenly refer to them as married. He knew he was more committed to their partnership than an outdated institution could ever substantiate, especially one that  was rooted in misogyny, imperialism, and bigotry. He wasn’t religious; neither was she. Yet it was newly occurring to him that if you threw out the dogma and removed the religion from ritual, perhaps ritual itself served a purpose: it concretized the ephemeral and grounded the impossible to describe. He longed to share a vivid memory of self-proclaimed vows, words that would invariably fall short and fail to convey the depth of his affection, but which would give him a sanctioned chance to express his devotion as best he could, so that she would always know, would never wonder, could always trust in the feeling that for as long as she wanted him, he was hers. 

_He imagined a beach. He imagined his thumbs stroking the backs of her hands. He imagined hearing water and seabirds and feeling the soles of his feet burrow into cool damp sand. He imagined finding the words to communicate that she was the love of his life. He imagined her sharing in return._

With a shake of his head, he realized that although he knew how _he_ felt, he couldn't assume she felt that certitude too. They'd  only lived together for three weeks! That was even shorter than the courtships of his impulsive brother.

He braced himself for the marital-status correction Raquel was surely about to issue.

"Yes, he is responsible. He's the most responsible person I know," Raquel replied to Glyceria, smiling to herself with satisfaction while caressing his leg. "Every day, I'm proud to be with him."

_His heart soared. _Raquel turned her neck to glance at him, eyes glimmering. He could only meet her gaze for a split-second before fearing he would lose his composure. Understanding, she smiled softly, then quickly looked away to help him catch his breath.

"Maybe he can't drink, but you can," Andat prodded, nodding towards the cup in Raquel's hand. "It's important to replenish your liquids after..." Andat trailed off and lifted her eyebrows roguishly as a replacement for whatever she wasn't saying aloud.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of recognition on Raquel's face. Her hand froze on his leg.  _All at once, he realized what she'd figured out._ The references had been blatant; it should have been obvious. He just wasn't used to anyone—except for Mariví—making insinuations about their love life.

Andat shifted her mischievous gaze to him. "It's also important to eat after..." She lifted her eyebrows without saying the word, causing him to mentally fill in the blank with today's actual act. _He couldn't stop visualizing being safely back home, naked in bed with Raquel. _"You say you have more _driving_ to do tonight?" Andat grinned rakishly. "Well then, you have to eat." She nudged the plate of _lumpia_ towards him, then burst into laughter. Glyceria laughed too; Daling restrained herself to a chuckle.

His jaw was agape; he was mortified. He wasn't used to _having_ a sex life, much less a publicly discussed one.  Alarmed and aghast, he resented that he and Raquel were the butt of the joke, the source of Andat's entertainment.

"Right, Ramon?" Andat called out to Glyceria's husband, who had apparently been standing a few feet away, looking out over the court, tending to two of their young brood this whole time.  His and Glyceria's second youngest was learning to walk, so was bravely forcing herself to lurch forward for a wobbly few seconds, then curve around to catch herself against her dad's steady leg, giggling delightedly at the thrill of gradual accomplishment.  Meanwhile, the three-year-old, who had already mastered the art of walking, had inserted himself onto the dance floor and was rhythmically lifting his feet to the beat with one-of-a-kind moves while staring with wide-eyed admiration at the well-coordinated legs of the adults dancing around him.

Just when Sergio suspected Ramon hadn't heard Andat at all, Ramon looked back over his shoulder with an easygoing smile and raised his red plastic cup in the air. Raquel raised hers in return. Sergio hurriedly lifted his empty cup, too, relieved for the recognizable social cue. Ramon pointed at the food on the table with his free hand and made the universal gesture of eating before turning his eyes back to his high-stepping toddler.

"They have six kids," Andat pointed out, returning her attention to him and Raquel, apparently satisfied with Ramon's nonverbal attestation. "So these two are experts." She lifted her eyebrows in Glyceria's direction. "They know how to do it, and keep doing it."

Glyceria burst into unashamed laughter, louder than the ringing guffaws of Andat and the kindly mirth of Daling. Glyceria's baby turned his eyes away from the dance floor and looked up curiously at his mom. As her belly laugh continued, the baby chortled and gurgled, high on the contagion of collective happiness.

It hit him that this was how these folks had been raised: laughing good-naturedly at themselves and one another, constantly looking for opportunities to share humor, not at one another's expense, but for one another's enjoyment.

Raquel snorted, then snickered, then broke into a full-on giggle. Her grip on his leg tightened, perhaps trying to assure him of what he was coming to on his own: he and Raquel weren't being picked on, they were being included through an invitation to laugh at themselves. No wonder Mariví was fitting in here. People were loose with their laughter and didn't take themselves too seriously. They weren't uptight, like he was.

He suddenly had new perspective on Daling offering to watch Paula and Mariví today. 

_ She'd explicitly gifted him and Raquel with alone time. _

These folks didn't begrudge that he and Raquel had had time to themselves; in fact, they _expected_ them to make the most of it.

He  felt himself grin shyly without meaning to. _It was good to know_ _they hadn't squandered the gift they'd been given.  _

He accepted the clean plate Raquel passed to him, which Daling had passed to her. He and Raquel obediently reached forward, each putting one _lumpia_ on their plates as Andat directed them with her eyes. 

Keeping her hand on his thigh, Raquel tentatively took a sip of _tuba_ while he bit into a crispy _lumpia._ The fried roll turned out to be filled with melted cheese. It was a bit simple for his tastes—relying on fat, oil, and salt for its appeal—but he could see why it was popular. He nodded and made sounds of enjoyment for the benefit of their hosts. Andat's eyebrows rose as if to say, _I__ told you so. _As he crunched through the rest of the _lumpia_, he realized her eyebrows had a lexicon unto themselves: they meant something different each time; they meant whatever she needed them to mean. They were a sneaky tool for exerting power, forcing her audience to pay close attention. Her modus operandi seemed to be: minimal words, maximum impact.

"How do you make this, Andat?" Raquel affably asked after taking a second sip of _tuba__._

True to form, Andat lifted her eyebrows, exuding an air of mystery as her lips curled into a smile.

"My mom won't even tell _me_ her secret recipe," Daling revealed with a teasing snort  at her mother.

While Andat described the process of sap collection to a fascinated Raquel, cryptically raising her eyebrows in lieu of saying each secret ingredient, Sergio watched  Ramon pick up his daughter and put her on his hip, then walk onto the dance floor and take his boogying toddler by the hand. Ramon made friendly eye contact with Sergio as he and the kids approached the table.  Without interrupting Andat's retelling of the fermentation process, Ramon placed his daughter on the far end of the bench beside his wife. The little girl instantly slid herself off the bench, apparently unwilling to sit still when she could be practicing her steps. Her parents seemed unconcerned that she was teetering over the concrete as she managed her own learning, keeping her paw on the table strut and her eyes on her brother, clearly motivated to follow him as he walked spiritedly around the table towards him and Raquel.

As Andat’s _tuba_ tale finished, Raquel followed Sergio's gaze and joined him in looking down at the self-assured toddler standing behind them. Raquel rapidly slipped her palm off Sergio's leg; the boy was at just the right height to see under the table. "Hello," Sergio greeted him. The boy broke into a broad smile and held out his hand expectantly. Sergio tilted his head, trying to decipher what the toddler might want.

"Is this his?" Raquel asked the adults at the table as she picked up a doll laying limp on the tabletop.

"They all share," Daling casually answered with a wave of her hand. 

Sergio felt himself smile at the idea of communal toy ownership as Raquel reached behind them to pass the doll to the toddler. He wondered if kids in the developed world who were individually gifted new toys were more likely to grow up as enslaved consumers, driven to collect material possessions to maintain their senses of identity.

"Salamat po!" the boy announced his thanks and happily received the doll, then grabbed Raquel's fingers with his other hand, which took her by surprise. The boy dipped his neck and lifted her knuckles to his forehead. He dropped her hand as quickly as he'd grabbed it, then turned his round eyes towards Sergio's, furrowing his forehead impatiently. The boy seemed compelled by duty to complete this procedure before he could go off and play. Sergio had witnessed this ritual a few times, but had never participated. 

Sergio speculatively presented his right hand. From what he'd observed, this ritual was usually performed by grandchildren greeting grandparents or other elders. Likely, the toddler was unsure how old he and Raquel were, so was following protocol, just in case. Sergio felt the boy heaving his large hand, then felt his knuckles briefly touch the boy's forehead. The toddler immediately let go and pivoted away, task complete, hopscotching cheerily back towards his sister, who still hadn't left the safety of the table strut.

Across from them, Ramon had seated himself between Andat and Glyceria, and was taking the baby from his wife's arms. Relieved of the little one, Glyceria massaged the top of her shoulder with her opposite hand.

"Have you seen Paula recently?" Raquel asked Ramon as he situated the baby on his lap.

"She's running around with her friends," Ramon remarked calmly while the baby tugged with glee at his dad's long hair. Unfazed, despite what looked like painful yanks,  Ramon carefully pried open his baby's claw, then pushed his hair out of reach behind his head and turned the little one to face the dance floor, gently moving him in time with the beat, successfully distracting him with the sea of dancers.

"Are you sure she's okay?" Raquel followed up, her concern clearly growing. They'd been at the fiesta—lingering on the outskirts or down here at the table—without glimpsing Paula even once.

"Of course," Ramon unflappably responded as the babe tried to clap to the music. "I'm sure she's having a great time."

Unsatisfied, Raquel swiveled her neck back and forth, rescanning every inch of what they could see. Her forehead became etched with worry. Sergio's heart constricted empathetically.  "Would you like us to go look for her?"  he whispered in Spanish.

"I think Paula made twenty new friends tonight," Daling shared serenely.  Strangely, his heart swelled at the thought of Paula making friends; he'd never had that kind of reaction to a kid's development before. He was puzzled, yet intrigued, by the pride resounding in his chest. 

"Don't worry," Glyceria assured Raquel, reading the crease in her forehead. "The kids always take care of each other."

Raquel smiled faintly at the relaxed parents at the table. 

"We can go search right now if you want," he softly repeated in Spanish.

Raquel turned her neck and looked up at him, eyes shimmering. "It's okay..." she replied, taking a deep breath. "I should probably get used to not having my eyes on her at all times."

"At any point, you give me the signal and we'll go look," he reiterated seriously. She smiled with appreciation and nodded weakly, replacing her hand on his leg. It occurred to him that maybe he wasn't the only one who felt soothed when they touched.  Nervously, he placed his right hand on her lower back, aware the gesture was visible to all. Swallowing dryly, he rubbed the curve of her spine,  overcoming, by the second, his anxiety about public affection, compelled by an even deeper desire to comfort Raquel. He could feel her taut muscles relaxing under his touch, which warmed his heart and affirmed his decision. Here he was, over forty, learning to be publicly coupled for the first time. It ran counter to his lifelong impulse to remain as unnoticeable as possible. People in love always drew attention—_and he'd always had a reason to hide_.

"You know..." Ramon mused to Raquel, using his free hand to pick at bits of sticky rice that were still clinging to the banana leaf left over by Glyceria and the baby. "...it's your mom you should be worried about."

"Really?" Raquel blurted with alarm, her lower back instantly tensing beneath his hand.

"He's joking!" Glyceria hurriedly made clear, then shot a glance at Ramon, perhaps reminding him to play gently with the newcomers.

"Tonight, everyone's been talking..." Andat lowered her voice and leaned in, causing him and Raquel to lean in, too. "...about Lolo Imoy, the old quiet fisherman, and Lola Mariví, the new white Spaniard."  He smiled hearing Mariví referred to as _lola_, which was how locals referred endearingly to elders.

"Everyone's curious about your mom..." Glyceria divulged to Raquel from across the table. "...who she is, where she came from, how she got the shyest _lolo_ in town to dance..."

"He's not shy," Daling corrected. "He just doesn't like noisy people." Daling used her index finger to point accusingly across the table at her mother, Ramon, and Glyceria, then lifted her finger above her head and flicked her wrist in a circle, indicating the entire town. "And _all of you_ are too noisy." The Filipinos broke into good-natured laughter and Raquel cracked a smile.

"_Ay_, my daughter," Andat chided Daling with a sigh. "You know you're too serious if you’re the only person old Imoy wants to talk to."

"Not anymore," Daling pleasantly riposted. "He made a new friend tonight." Daling turned to Raquel. "It's been sweet to watch; for hours, your mom and Imoy have been talking, dancing, laughing...”

"I'm jealous," Andat harrumphed. “Not romantically," she swiftly clarified to the whole table. "I'm happy for them. I’m just mad at him for never joining us at the store. We’ve been friends for seventy years. Seventy years! Every time he stops by, I invite him to sit. He never stays to talk. Just _hello_, a stupid nothing comment about the rain coming, then gets on his _tuk-tuk_ and disappears for another month. Time is passing! What is he thinking keeping to himself, day after day? It's not healthy." She sounded genuinely frustrated that her masterful social skills were ineffective on her old friend.

"I know why he doesn't sit with you," Daling broke the silence.

Andat creased her brows, skeptically, intently listening.

"You make him sad," Daling summated.

Andat froze, taken aback. Verve dampened, her stricken eyes exposed existential fear. "I don't understand why you would say that to me," she uttered in a whisper. "I work very hard to make people happy."

Daling gazed compassionately at her mom. "You make him sad because all of you remind him of his wife," she illuminated with reverence. "You've all been friends your whole lives. When he sees you and the gang sitting and laughing, just like when you were kids and teenagers and then parents, it makes him sad because it reminds him that she's not here."

"He told you this?" Andat soberly checked.

"He didn't have to tell me."

"Imoy's wife died a few years ago," Glyceria explained—unnecessarily—to him and Raquel.

"_Uy__! _A few years?" Andat dramatically interjected, perhaps eager to shed her own somber energy. "You're too young to be losing track of time, Ceri," she reprimanded, using Glyceria's nickname. "He's been alone since before the typhoon. I remember him paddling up and down the streets in his old fishing boat, bringing tarps and water to neighbors like us, stranded on our little islands. I don't think he slept for two weeks. Daling, you remember? You, me, and baby Nani living on the roof of the store?" Andat rhetorically prompted her daughter, who nodded with a soft smile. Andat turned back to the rest of the table conclusively. "It's not a few years she's been gone. It's at least ten."

Sergio rubbed the small of Raquel’s back as a wave of emotion rolled through him. _After only twenty three days, he couldn't imagine life after Raquel._ Life would feel empty, pointless; he might be able go through the motions but his soul would be dormant—hiding from the sky, from joyful laughter, from beauty, from grit—anything that would remind him of her. As if she could hear his inner cry, Raquel's fingers slid farther around his leg. She stroked the inside of his thigh, her touch both soothing and invigorating—easing his heart, stirring his lust—challenging him to maintain neighborly poise as he innocently met the eyes of their tablemates.

"Ten years..." Glyceria lamented, then pouted, looking at Ramon. "Longer than we've been together. Can you imagine being alone for so long?"

"I _cannot_ imagine." Ramon shook his head sincerely, his long hair swaying. "Can _you_ imagine what we were like ten years ago?" He carefully moved the baby to his other arm. "Back when we were young and strong—before we had all these kids to wear us down?" Glyceria grinned. Ramon giggled, which Sergio had noticed Filipino men often felt free to do.

"You're still young and strong," Daling corrected the vibrant couple.

"You know who's still young and strong," Ramon confided, "Lolo Imoy and Raquel's mom."

"It's true!" Glyceria burst emphatically, then looked at Raquel with eyes wide. "They've been on their feet all night."

"All night?" Raquel confirmed.

"Maybe when you go that many years without it, you have a lot of extra energy," Andat quipped, cheekily raising her eyebrows, returning to her trickster comfort zone. "All that eating and drinking without anywhere for your energy to go."

Raquel cough-laughed, clearly surprised that the town's _lolas_ and _lolos_ weren't exempt from suggestive innuendo. The table laughed heartily, including Daling, who was rolling her eyes and shaking her head even as she chuckled.  Despite the ridiculousness and flawed logic, Sergio felt himself smile.

"That's why you work too hard, Daling," Andat feigned an offhand tone. "You have extra energy built up for years and years. You need an outlet."

"Stop it, Mom," Daling warned unsmilingly, suddenly steely. Daling looked down at Glyceria and Ramon's toddler who was standing by her elbow, mouth gaping like a guppy fish. Daling carefully dipped a bite of _bulad_ in a vinegar dish and fed him the salted fish from her own fingers.

Sergio startled as Andat piercingly looked into his eyes. "Do you have a sister?"

He shook his head, puzzled.

"Do you have a sister?" Andat incisively repeated her question to Raquel.

"Yes, I do..." Raquel answered cautiously, intonation rising.

"Can you introduce her to my daughter?"

Daling scowled at her mom. "Please ignore her," Daling addressed him and Raquel without breaking eye contact with her mother. "She doesn't believe I'm content with my life." Daling abruptly shifted her gaze to Ramon and Glyceria. "Don't I look content to you?" Ironically, the intensity of Daling's voice betrayed unmistakable dissatisfaction. Wisely, Ramon and Glyceria didn't answer as Daling fiercely pressed another bit dried fish into the shallow dish of vinegar, her hand visibly trembling with repressed emotion. Daling  reached down and  fed another bite of _bulad_ to the grateful toddler. "All of you keep me entertained," she forcefully pronounced without looking up, continuing to dunk dried fish in vinegar and attentively feed the boy from her fingers.

"You're missing out on other ways to be entertained," Andat parried, the only person undeterred by her daughter's spiked armor.

"And what about you?" Daling snapped, glancing up. "You've never even lived with a partner."

Andat grinned devilishly. "But I've always had my fun. That's why I'm tired all the time. It's also why I eat and drink too much." Andat winked at him and Raquel. "Speaking of which, you two haven't eaten enough. Tell me what you like. I'll go get it."

"Oh, no, you don't need to do that for us," Raquel protested, then looked at him promptingly.

"We can go ourselves," he echoed, stilling his hand against her back and readying to stand.  
  
"I want to stretch my legs..." Andat persisted, standing up before they could. Sergio suspected she also wanted to diffuse the tension between her and her daughter. "Besides..." Andat lifted her empty _tuba_ jug and shook it. "...a few friends owe me favors. So tell me what you like: chicken or pork." Sergio looked to Raquel, who amenably shrugged. “I'll bring you a little bit of everything and you can see what you like," Andat decided, her eyes glinting fondly at them. Perhaps her earlier teasing—and now their witnessing of a family disagreement—had been rights of passage.

Andat secured the empty jug under her arm and strolled purposefully up the inside edge of the court, towards a coven of men and women her age, sitting on a hodgepodge collection of folding chairs. Their congenial faces lit up as she approached. Each of them had an unmarked jug beside them on the concrete, liquid contents ranging from milky-white to reddish-brown. One by one, they passed their sloshing jugs to the standing Andat who drank directly from each vessel before sending it back around the circle while they laughed and talked.

"I apologize for my mom asking if you have sisters," Daling calmly raised, the edge in her voice gone, her spirit still subdued. The boy must have been full of dried fish because he was jauntily walking back around the table towards his parents. Glyceria and Ramon seemed to have fallen into a conversation in Visayan as Ramon held their wiggling baby and Glyceria held the hand of their daughter, who was determinedly practicing her steps—first staggering one way, then the other—back and forth behind her parents' bench.

"You have nothing to apologize for," Raquel earnestly assured Daling, her left hand slipping off his leg as she twisted her torso to the right to face their benchmate.

"Agreed," he quickly concurred, surprising himself by indiscreetly sliding his right hand farther around Raquel as she turned, his fingers gliding around to her stomach. Even without seeing Raquel's face, he could feel her exuding contentment. She scooted backwards, pressing her spine against his side and placing her hands over his wrist, comfortably nestling in the crook of his arm.

"My mother is—_was_—the same way," Raquel commiserated while softly kneading his forearm with her thumbs, preventing him from second-guessing his choice and pulling away, instead compelling him to hold her tighter. Perhaps that was the benefit of Daling's mom ripping off the bandaid of propriety: this tame embrace was nothing compared to Andat's allusions. "Until he and I met," Raquel reflected tenderly, "my mom was constantly nudging me to have fun. Isn't that right, dear?" She tilted her neck back and to the side, angling her question towards him.

_He felt flush. _She'd never called him _dear_ in public before. He loved how it felt—it demarcated them as a perfect atomic unit, bound electrons whose mass could only be measured together. "Y-yes," he eked out, feeling his glasses slip down his nose in the muggy tropic air. "Mariví was convinced that Raquel worked too hard. She was clearly pleased when Raquel and I started spending time together." He reached up with his free left hand and pushed his frames up the bridge of his nose.

"I appreciate that our mothers want us to be happy," Daling underscored with equanimity, her melancholy eyes flowing between him and Raquel. "The problem is: I already met my soulmate." Daling sighed heavily and her eyes fell to the backs of her weathered hands.  "The reason I have no interest in dating isn't because I don’t believe I could meet someone, it's because I already met _the_ one..." 

Raquel stopped massaging his arm and clutched him as if the slightest movement introduced the risk of separation. He squeezed her even closer, feeling the same.

Daling shook her head to herself, then looked up and smiled faintly, meeting his eyes, then Raquel's. "My mom doesn't know what it's like to have met the one person who can hold all of you, wants to hold all of you, who you can see fully and who you wholly love in return. The person you can navigate every hardship with, all of life's tragedies, and when you wake up beside them, you know that despite it all, you're the luckiest person in the world..." One side of Daling's mouth curved upwards wistfully, her gaze drifting beyond them to the dark jungle behind their heads. "...the person without whom life no longer makes sense." Her cheek twitched and her smile fell.

_His heart broke for Daling. _

Her grief was palpable, unfathomable. She'd articulated how he felt about Raquel.

He could feel the back of Raquel's ribcage expand and contract against his side. He synced his breath with hers, feeling more grounded by the second. He wished Daling could experience the same kind of comfort; at some point in the past, she obviously had.

"I am so sorry, Daling," Raquel empathized, her voice cracking. She reached out and briefly touched the back of Daling's hand, then returned her fingers to his arm.

Daling refocused on their faces with her deep sorrowful eyes; she smiled wanly. "For those of us who've been lucky enough to experience what it's like..." She lifted her chin towards the two of them. "...it's easy to convince ourselves that life is about being together, isn't it? But life _isn't_ about love. It's about survival. And it isn’t about two people, it’s about all your people..." Daling looked at him pointedly. "You were here for a long time by yourself. Almost a year..."

He nodded reluctantly, internally cringing at how observant she'd been, knowing her mental record-keeping could one day be their undoing.

"...and I know _you_ moved here not even a month ago," Daling addressed Raquel, who nodded, similarly hesitant. Daling's eyes drifted back up to his. “So why were you here on Palawan by yourself when the one person who gives your life meaning was across the ocean?"

He swallowed dryly.

"Don't worry..." Daling waved her hand as if dispelling a fog of fear that had rapidly risen up between her and them. "I'm not asking you two to explain yourselves. Unlike my mom, I believe in privacy."

He smiled weakly, thankful they didn't need to lie.

"I'm just telling you that I think you know what sacrifice is like. It's what makes you different from other foreigners I've met." She squinted into his eyes. "I remember when you'd wander into my store alone. I recognized something in you—something I live with everyday. You looked lonely but not ignorant. You knew the taste of happiness, but knew you couldn't have it..." _He'd been in a state of mourning—accepting his brother was gone, fearing he'd never see Raquel again, convinced that the heist had been a devastating net loss. _"...When Raquel arrived, it all made sense. _You_ made sense. I could see it from the moment you walked in together: you were each other's soulmate. The difference is: you two were reunited. She and I never will be."

"How did you lose her?" he whispered, immediately regretting he'd pried, realizing Daling might want privacy, too.

"You see that family over there?" Daling turned her gaze up the court towards the middle-aged fellow who'd previously lost a skewer to a dog. "That's her eldest brother on the left. The next two are her brother-in-law and sister. Then her youngest sister and her baby. And on the right are her parents and grandparents, her two younger brothers and their wives. See how many kids they all keep having?" The dynamic family cluster was crawling with babies, adolescents, and teens. "_Ay_!" she exclaimed, her fingertips lightly striking the table. "Too many mouths to feed!"

She turned back to him and Raquel, then shrugged with rueful acceptance as if her story was done.

"I don't understand..." he admitted, blinking rapidly, confused.

"She's the one who made it out of the village," Daling illuminated matter of factly, her smile emerging with humble pride. He furrowed his forehead, hoping she'd elaborate. "We grew up here together, in love for as long as I can remember. We'd always planned to get away, then help our families from overseas. We thought we could do it; we thought we were so smart. But it turns out being smart isn't enough. So we did what we had to do. We got her out. I stayed behind.” She sounded proud of the choices they'd made, though her trembling pupils betrayed that her grief and pride would always be intertwined.

"Where did she go?" Raquel softly asked.

"She's in America."

"She's alive?" Raquel checked.

"Oh, yes," Daling confirmed. "She's a caregiver for an American family. She's raised their kids, now their grandkids, she's nursed their _lolas_ and _lolos _seven days a week for twenty years. She sends money to her family every month. She supports them all." She gestured up the court towards the sprawling brood. "Her first few years in the U.S., she sent me the money to start my store. The store is why I was able to have Nani, take care of my mom, help Glyceria start her business..."

"When was the last time you saw her?" Raquel wondered.

"Nineteen years ago this month."

He heard Raquel gasp as his jaw dropped.

"She hasn't visited?" Raquel inquired, sounding alarmed.

"_Ay!_ Do you know how much a plane ticket costs? How can you justify bringing one person across the ocean, when that same money could feed those kids for half a year?"

"Let us help you," he blurted before he knew what he was saying.

"Yes!" Raquel insisted, her spine straightening. "We can help with the cost of her coming to visit."

Daling canted her head at them sympathetically as if she thought they were sweet but naive. "That's impossible, but thank you," she asserted. Apparently, she'd buried her hope so deep that their practical enthusiasm couldn't unearth it. He could see Raquel squaring her shoulders, ready to dig up whatever obstacles Daling foresaw. He opened his mouth, confident they could execute a reunion mission.

Daling swiftly lifted her hands off the table and held her palms out towards them, adamant that they stop, her steady pupils resolute. "She's not there legally," Daling exposed plainly, eyes grave. She lowered her hands slowly, evidently satisfied that he and Raquel had finally understood. "We always knew it was a one-way trip."

_He was short of breath. _He felt humbled. He'd invested twenty years of his life in a plan to better his circumstances and that of his brother. Daling and her long-lost lover had selflessly planned to better the lives of the next generation, their own happiness the sacrificial cost. No wonder he instinctively respected her: the fortitude of her and her partner was the stuff of legends; their vigil wasn't a year long, it was a lifetime long.

"Don't look so sad," Daling sweetly reproached.  She reached forward and patted them both, where Raquel's fingers met his arm. "The plan is working. This _is_ success," she emphasized sincerely.

"I respect a well-executed plan," he praised, then forced himself to smile.

Daling returned his smile, perhaps feeling seen.  "Two of her nieces are especially bright, like her." She glanced up the court again. He followed her eyes, wondering which of the many kids she meant. "We're saving to send them to nursing school. They'll graduate, pass their exams, and get to America legally—like we never could. They'll work in a hospital and be the ones to send money back to the village. And once they're citizens, they'll apply to bring their parents into the States."

He reflected as he watched the kids playing chase around the seated adults. He'd taken up a mantle of his own choosing; his father hadn't asked him to—it had stemmed from inside.  He wondered what it was like to be conscripted into service to one's family—to be identified as smart and have your fate decided by a pair of well-meaning aunties who'd given up everything—including their love for one another—so that you could have the opportunity to survive. Would you feel indebted to someone you'd never met, who'd bravely left your homeland before you were born? Would you resent the weight of the past and the decisions they'd made on your behalf? Would you consider shirking the responsibility and breaking the chain they'd planned out so carefully, link by essential link?

"I realize it's still a decade or two away..." Raquel cautiously investigated. "...but after her nieces are established in America, sending money back here, couldn't she come home?"

He looked at Daling, hoping she wouldn't take offense at Raquel  trying to find a solution for the star-crossed lovers.

"It's my most common daydream," Daling confessed, reigniting her hallmark warm smile. "I can see it so clearly..." Her eyes softened, then glistened. "We'd run the store together. We'd become the old ones sitting out front. She’d meet Nani, who'd be grown by then, probably with her own kids."

"So why keep it a dream?" he burst unthinkingly. He felt Raquel squeeze his arm tenderly, perhaps recalling their conversation in bed in Madrid  when she'd suggested he truncate the homage to his father, then dedicate himself to his own dreams. "Why not make it happen?"

"Too risky." Daling shook her head back and forth, the moisture clearing from her eyes. "She'd have to sneak out of America without immigration knowing she was ever there. If she got caught—even on her way out—it would be a black mark on her family's file. Her nieces would never have a chance to bring their family over legally. Everything we sacrificed would be a waste."

_ He felt his blood boil at the injustice of the world. _

Where you were born had nothing to do with merit. Yet the differences in opportunity were staggering. If personal greed didn't exist—and individuals and corporations hadn't amassed unnecessary fortunes—then food, water, and shelter could be shared with everyone on the planet; there was enough to go around.

_His free left hand clenched into a fist._

Hundreds of millions were a paper pittance compared to the electronic treasuries controlled by the corporate oligarchies and their puppet governments. What was the guerrilla version of a socioeconomic war? The structural foundation of the world economy needed to be shifted and made equitable without unintended consequences to those already hurting the most. So how could institutions be radicalized, decentralized, directly democratized overnight? How could disparities in income and resource consumption be equalized across the globe without class-based bloodshed or new fiefdoms rising up?

_He realized he had tears in his eyes._

He didn't have a solution for Daling's partner and family to be able circumvent the U.S. government for generations to come. He didn't know how to build a sustainable infrastructure for the world's rural poor to be able to transcend from scraping by to healthily thriving. Entrenched systems of power were far reaching, life threatening—he wanted to marshal his resources to dismantle them all.

He blinked away his tears—tears of fury, tears of pain—then noticed that Raquel had placed her hand over one of Daling's. Daling appeared to be taking deep breaths as she and Raquel made eye contact. He looked away, back up the court, to the laughing families, the responsible children, the dreams deferred. What was the point of having access to money if he couldn't make a difference in the lives of real people? He vowed to figure out how to turn their money into power, so people like Daling's lover wouldn't have to choose between feeding their families—_and love_.

“Now you know why I get frustrated..." Daling interrupted his reverie, shrugging with acquiescence at him and Raquel. Raquel was still snuggly nestled in the crook of his right arm. He pressed his right hand against her stomach, pledging to treasure—more than ever—every instant they had together. "Whenever my mom prods me to meet someone, it's disrespectful." Daling sighed. "And honestly, it's just tiresome.” He nodded, visualizing how enraged he would be if anyone tried to tell him to forget about Raquel.

"Have you told your mom how you feel?" Raquel compassionately asked.

"Of course. But since she's never had that kind of connection with someone, she doesn't get it. My mom says, _Daling, you need to move on like she has_."

"Maybe she hasn't," Raquel asserted.

"I _know_ she hasn't," Daling agreed. "Imagine if you two were separated, not knowing if you'd ever see each other again. Does that change how you feel about the other?"

"Not at all," he breathlessly responded.

Raquel twisted towards him and glanced up at his eyes, meeting his gaze for the first time since their talk with Daling began. Unshed tears gave her irises an ethereal sheen. He assumed his looked similarly glossy. He slid his left hand around her and steadily held her with both arms, no longer caring whether the whole world saw. Why hold back when there were other soulmates who could never be reunited? He vowed to never take their time together for granted.

Over Raquel's head, in his peripheral vision, he saw Daling stand up with a smile. She reached for the used plastic plates on the table, stacking them neatly. Amidst the moving backdrop of dancers, he noticed a familiar pair of pigtails fly into view from left to right, then disappear again faster than he could speak. "I just saw Paula," he uttered.

"Where?" Raquel burst, whipping her head around and pivoting on the bench without leaving his encircling arms.

Several meters to their right, Paula and Nani emerged from the crowd, running up the length of the court while holding hands, headed in the direction of the far basket.  The friends giggled as they weaved past the clumps of seated people, perhaps delighting in the challenge  of moving at top speed without letting their hands come unlinked.

He heard Raquel whimper with parental love as she stared up the court, riveted by her daughter at play.

The girls stopped running when they reached the quiet corner of the concrete slab. Nani cupped both hands and whispered in Paula's ear. Even at this distance, he could see Paula's eyes widen as she listened attentively to Nani's whisper.  Paula clapped one hand to her mouth with exaggerated shock, causing Nani to lean back, then dissolve into a full-body giggle. Paula gestured for Nani to come closer again. Nani leaned in with her ear as Paula cupped her hands and whispered in turn. As Paula continued to whisper, Nani grinned wider and wider, nodding with agreement every few seconds. Abruptly, Paula stopped whispering and took off running. Nani startled, then called out laughingly, running after Paula with optimistic determination. One by one, they melted into the crowd as quickly as they'd appeared.

Raquel continued staring where Paula had last been seen.

"See? Paula is happy," Daling warmly broached, tidying the table as she moved her way around it.

Raquel nodded, then  crossed her arms to grip his biceps, returning his hug without turning around. His heart thumped so strongly,  he wondered if she could hear it. 

She heavily exhaled, her head relaxing back against his chest. He could feel her radiating parental relief; it was his honor to ground her with his touch.  He nuzzled the top of her head, inhaling the scent of her scalp, burying his nose and lips in her mussed hair .

"Well aren't you two adorable?" Mariví's unmistakable voice rung out over the din.

He lifted his head as Raquel released his arms. Reflexively, he faced forward and put his hands in his lap, then looked across the table, unblinking.

"Look who I found!" Andat heralded. She was triumphantly carrying her refilled _tuba_ jug in her elevated hands, walking to the rhythm of the current song as if leading a conga line. Behind her, Mariví was euphorically waving. Seeing the joy in her eyes, he knew it was the right choice to not run from the connections in this village. Who knew how many months of clarity Mariví had left? It would be callous to rip her away from this community when she seemed to be experiencing a renaissance of the soul. Behind Mariví was the fellow they hadn't yet met but who they'd now heard so much about—the white-haired contemporary of Mariví and Andat's, who was broadly smiling and exuding the familiar equilibrium of someone who enjoyed the exuberance of others while relishing his own tranquil interior.

"I'm so glad you decided to come!" Mariví erupted with delight, swiftly gliding around the table to embrace Raquel, who stood up so she could turn and hug her mother properly. As they separated, Mariví tilted her neck at him and frowned, then made a gesture of wanting to hug him next. Surprised—he leapt up quickly—bumping the bench with the back of his legs as he stood, then knocking it again with his shins as he pivoted. He stiffly embraced Mariví as she ebulliently gripped the sides of his arms and kissed each of his cheeks in turn.

"Have a seat, Mom," Raquel invited as she sat back down and Daling did, too. Raquel slid much closer to Daling than before, motioning at him to join her in scooting up the bench to make room for Mariví, who was sitting down to his left. He felt his anxiety kick back in as he realized how packed the table was about to get. Raquel seemed to know exactly what he was thinking because she pressed her leg against his in solidarity, and ran her left hand down his lower back, momentarily; long enough for him to feel her presence, but not so long that he'd feel self-conscious about her demonstrative affection in front of what was becoming a crowd.

Across from Mariví, Imoy accepted the space on the end of the bench, which Glyceria and Ramon had created for him by scooting themselves closer to Andat's vacant seat. Andat was still standing, making her way around the table, refilling _tuba _cups for Ramon and Glyceria, then pouring a new cup for Imoy, who politely refused, shaking his head despite Andat's stern glare. Andat playfully quipped at Imoy in the local dialect—words too obscure for Sergio to discern. He got the gist though, since Andat was gesturing towards him as she spoke. Imoy looked his way for the first time. The gentle-eyed fellow nodded once as a salutation. Grateful for the low-key greeting, Sergio nodded back. Imoy smiled in return, perhaps similarly appreciative for the quiet line of communication beneath the hubbub of interweaving crosstalk. Andat had loudly moved onto Mariví and was about to pour a fresh cup of _tuba_ for her. Raquel called out to Andat to wait, then spoke in Spanish to her mom while reaching in front of him to pass Mariví a cup—into which she'd poured half of her own _tuba_—cleverly finding a diplomatic way to offload some of the strong alcohol while preventing her mom from receiving an Andat-sized serving.

Andat loomed over Raquel and Daling now, Raquel successfully covering the top of her cup and explaining how she wasn't yet done and wanted to keep it pure since it was Andat's special recipe. Daling accepted only a tad of _tuba_ before laughingly using a local expletive and swatting her mom's wrist to stop the pouring; Daling mirthfully shook her head with a roll of her eyes, apparently unsurprised by her predictable mother who had a compulsion to coax everyone to gorge and imbibe. Andat looked apologetically from him to Raquel. "I didn't get your food yet. When I saw your mom and Imoy I got so excited, I had to bring them back. I'll go now. Just a minute."

"No, no, please don't," he piped up, not wanting Andat to make a trip just for them.

"Sit with us, Andat," Mariví insisted, gesturing to Andat's empty seat. Ramon scooted himself and the baby even closer to Glyceria, ensuring Andat had ample space to slide in.

"We promise we are enjoying ourselves, and will continue enjoying ourselves," Raquel swore, audaciously meeting Andat's narrowing gaze. "We'll go get food soon. Now it's your turn to sit, eat, and enjoy." Raquel raised her eyebrows with mock-rebuke, then crossed her arms impatiently.

Andat smiled in a way he hadn't seen before. It wasn't performative or meant to tease. It wasn't provocative or veiled. It was simple, sincere satisfaction. Raquel's brilliant mimicry proved they respected her stubborn pushiness and recognized that it came from wanting others to experience joy. Andat peacefully settled onto the end of the bench, across from Daling, then refilled her own cup of _tuba _and savored a sip while observing the rest of the table.

"Raquel! Sergio!" Mariví got their attention while looking directly across the table at her new friend. "I'd like you to meet Imoy. Imoy, this is my daughter and her partner, who are not as antisocial as I'd feared."

"Pleased to meet you," Imoy greeted with a bashful smile.

"Imoy has solved our problem," Mariví announced conclusively, proudly turning to him and Raquel.

"And what problem is that, Mom?" Raquel politely inquired, restraining her evident dubiousness so as not to insult Imoy.

"Our new house problem, of course," Mariví replied, shrugging her shoulders as if it was obvious. "I know you've been searching for a boat so we can get to the new house. Imoy has one—two in fact—so he can sell us one, and still have the other to come visit."

Sergio felt his eyes widen. Raquel turned her neck to glance at him, her eyes equally alarmed. Over the last couple of weeks, they'd found a house that was so remote, you could only get to it by boat. There was no road access and it was directly on the beach, sheltered by acres of unkempt jungle. It could be dangerous in a typhoon to not have a land-based escape route, and if you needed to get to a hospital quickly, your boat had better be fast. But with all the dangers they were balancing, he and Raquel had decided the secluded home was a perfect fit: it was close enough to this village to bring Paula in for playdates, yet was deep enough in the jungle that it couldn’t be stumbled upon accidentally. While they were waiting for the seller to close, they'd been hunting for a boat. As with everything in their lives, they had to be discreet, so instead of procuring a new, registered watercraft from the city, they were looking for a used boat to buy without paperwork. Without knowing about that covert need, Mariví may have indeed found a solution. What probably alarmed Raquel—and took him aback too—was that they hadn't even moved in and already the location of their supposedly hidden house had been disclosed to a stranger.

This whole _barangay_ gambit was becoming the interconnected village drama he and Raquel had anticipated when talking earlier tonight.  He wished they were alone so they could facepalm and laugh wryly at their inescapable fate.  Not only had it been impossible to get Mariví and Paula to use nicknames for him and Raquel, it was evidently going to be just as hard to prevent them from sharing something as seemingly innocuous as where they lived.  So their safety rested on the hope that these rural folks didn't spend too much time with their friends or relatives in Puerto Princesa—cityfolk who'd be much more likely to come across an internet news story about a bank heist fugitive falling in love with a police inspector who was suspected of having fled Spain with her mother and daughter.

"I don't want to sell the boat; I want you to have it," Imoy clarified self-consciously, likely perceiving his and Raquel's silence as skepticism about his motivation. He and Raquel returned their eyes to Imoy, who was looking at Mariví worriedly, his boney shoulders hunched with embarrassment. Sergio could see the earnestness of a fellow who realized he liked someone—perhaps for the first time in years—and was terrified his generous intentions had been misconstrued as calculated greed. Sergio felt guilty, not wanting Imoy to think they didn't trust him; Sergio was confident that Imoy wasn't a swindler and that he and Raquel weren't marks.

"Don't be silly," Mariví countered kindly. "Raquel and Sergio will pay a fair price for your boat."

"No, please, it's okay," Imoy reiterated sincerely. "I don't need my little ferry. It's just me now." Imoy's neck bent slightly as he looked around the table and noticed he was the focus of attention. Andat, Daling, Ramon, and Glyceria were all staring, visibly holding their breaths, likely wondering if Imoy was about to open up about his grief.

Sergio knew how it felt to be the most private person at the table, paradoxically becoming the person of greatest intrigue. In Toledo, whenever the boisterous dinner table had fallen silent, the rest of the gang staring expectantly at him, he'd found the easiest way to diffuse their curiosity was to share something small, enough to temporarily satiate the human hunger for knowledge, giving him time to re-hide the parts of himself he most wanted to keep out of sight. Maybe he was just projecting, but he thought he could see Imoy mentally edging towards a similar escape hatch.

"My wife and I were fishermen. We'd catch them in the mornings. I'd clean them, she'd sell," he informed Mariví, probably finding it easier to describe the functional aspects of life than emotionally engage with those who'd known his wife, too. "The weather changed a lot over the years. More typhoons than before. We caught less, but still enough to feed the kids and trade with friends for coconut and rice..." In what looked like an unintentional reflex, his eyes flicked sideways to Andat. The old schoolmates made eye contact for a split second before his gaze darted back, perhaps finding it painful to be seen by someone who recalled it all.

"When the giant fishing ships came, the fish disappeared. We heard there were still some farther out, but not where local boats like ours could safely reach. We needed a new way to feed our family. My wife and I had fished our whole lives. We thought, what else can we do? We knew boats—how to navigate, how to care for them—so we moved to Boracay and got a little ferry. Not so big, just the right size for us. I drove and kept it clean; she hawked tickets and kicked people off if they hadn't paid..." His eyes softened and he grinned broadly to himself, clearly unable to repress the memory of the wife he'd adored.

"...Every day we went between Boracay and the Aklan mainland. The boat was a good boat. Sturdy. Reliable. You'll like it." He nodded encouragingly at him and Raquel. "I'm very grateful its engine worked so hard for us; we were able to feed our family. More tourists came to Boracay every year and our kids learned languages while they worked in the bars. A little Spanish, a little French; Korean and Japanese, too. That's why they could both get jobs in a call center in Manila." He beamed adoringly about his kids, who'd evidently far exceeded the expectations for this village. "My wife and I often talked about how our time in Malay, Aklan ended up giving them a better opportunity than if we'd stayed here..."

Sergio felt his mouth open, but resisted the urge to correct Imoy. It didn't sound like Imoy's family had been _given_ any opportunities; he and his wife and their children had _created_ opportunities by weathering storms and making the most of every circumstance. Sergio admired Imoy's adaptability and lack of resentment, yet felt his own stomach churn, sickened by the economic forces that had led to each condition. Carbon emissions from the industrialized world had warmed the oceans, altering weather patterns and coastal biomes. Corporate-owned ships had overfished, eradicating the livelihoods of those whose communities depended on fishing for subsistence. Rapid development on Boracay had been a tourism boon, but Sergio had read that poor infrastructure and a lack of long-term planning meant sewage flowed directly into the sea.

"...When my wife got cancer in the stomach, we came back home," Imoy spoke with an unmistakable quaver in his voice. "Once she died, I didn't want to sell our little ferry. It reminded me of her."  Imoy and Andat locked eyes. Andat dipped her head solemnly. Imoy nodded back appreciatively, evidently accepting her empathy. Sergio was honored to witness this exchange between lifelong friends; it didn't need translation since it didn't need words. It struck him that Daling, Imoy, and even Andat weren't ignoring the pain of the soul. They just didn't dwell on what they couldn't control. They carried grief, clearly; but not remorse. By spending less energy on pity and regret, they had more energy to playfully work with what they've got.

"When I lost my husband twenty years ago..." Mariví shared with quiet reverence, mirroring Imoy's tone. "...I refused to wash his clothes or give them away. I kept them until the last of his scent had gone forever."

Sergio glanced to his right at Raquel.  Her pupils drank him in as if trying to stop time with her mind. _He knew how she felt._ He fought the impulse to wrap his arms around her. He could see her clutching her own thighs, perhaps battling a similar impulse to grab him by the neck and press her lips against his.

"Don't look so worried you kids," Andat broke the silence. "The best thing to do is enjoy what you have while you have it."

"It's true," Mariví agreed with both gravity and levity. "You don't know what the future holds. So why fear what you can't see?"

He pulled his eyes away from Raquel and noticed Andat and Mariví weren't only speaking to them, they were also speaking to Glyceria and Ramon. The young father still held the baby in his lap, but was resting his head on his wife's shoulder; Glyceria was stroking the back of his hair with one hand while their baby held the pinky of her other.

"Lola Andat and Lola Mariví are right," Imoy added, then took a deep breath as Andat smiled with newfound contentment. "The future is unpredictable, so find pleasure in the present." Imoy's eyes briefly twitched—probably without intending to—towards Mariví. 

"Sergio, now you know why we're always laughing..." Andat raised her eyebrows with a deep grin, proving she was fully aware of how uncomfortable he'd previously been. "If we weren't laughing, we'd be crying."  An hour ago he would've described her tone as impish. Now, he realized the tonal layers were a series of flavors that hit your palate one after the other; you wouldn't have known they mixed well together unless you'd tasted them firsthand.

"That's a good motto," he admired earnestly. Andat was a trickster who knew sorrow; her mischief was her sneaky-deep attempt to acknowledge the experience of being human. She seemed to believe her calling was to help people enjoy life, despite—_and because of_—the tragedy.

He knew his journey would be long if he made it his quest to learn to enjoy life, but, beside Raquel, he believed he could grow. In any twenty-four hour period with her, he transformed more than he had during any previous year of life. Her presence was an accelerant for his evolving soul.

"So the boat," Mariví prompted, popping her shoulders, her gaze shifting between him and Raquel. "We'll take good care of it, won't we?"

Sergio looked to Raquel who smiled her assent. He agreed, feeling himself smile back.

Raquel turned to Imoy. "We'd be honored to be the next owners of your boat," she confirmed. "And like my mom said, we'll pay a fair market price."

"It probably needs some love and attention..." Imoy warned, looking left at Glyceria.

"Of course I'll service it!" Glyceria excitedly offered, obviously passionate about her vocation. Ramon lifted his head off her shoulder as she turned to him. "Take R.J. with you to the city when you go shopping in the morning."

"I'll watch Ramon Junior tomorrow," Daling interjected eagerly, making a face at the baby, as if already anticipating her day with him.

The table broke into overlapping spirited conversations as Glyceria and Imoy organized how and when to meet at the dock, and Daling helped Ramon make arrangements for the rest of the kids. Meanwhile, Raquel leaned forward and talked around him to her mom, asking in Spanish how her day had been and checking to see if she was tired.

Sergio felt his heart straining, pushing against his ribcage, surging with unfamiliar warm feelings. After his mom had died, then his dad, and he'd resided full-time at the hospital, the rotating ward nurses were his simulacrum for family. Yes, he loved the gang he'd assembled and he'd learned—through Moscow, Nairobi, Helsinki, and the rest—the elation of shared triumph and the heartache of shared loss; but he'd always been the leader, with more insight, authority, and responsibility than his crew. So _this_ feeling was new. He wasn't used to other adults proactively assisting him. He wasn't used to the feeling of community. Like anything new, it was strange. And like anything new that he experienced beside Raquel, he felt tender and eager and nervous yet brave. As usual, as if she could hear his deepest thoughts, she placed her left hand on his lower back while she continued talking around him with her mom.

"Mom!" Paula's euphoric voice bubbled up over the background noise of lively music and equally lively conversation.

He turned his head around, just in time to see Paula barreling at them at full speed, her pigtails flying behind her like a streamer.

He scooted quickly away from Raquel, towards Mariví on his left, making space for Paula to slide in between them. Sure enough, the little girl dove and climbed and wiggled onto her mother's lap like an adolescent joey that had no idea it was two sizes too big for its kangaroo mama's pouch. Amusedly, he noticed a dusty sandal print appear on the side of his thigh as she inadvertently kicked him while clambering into place. 

Clearly, Raquel didn't mind being elbowed and kneed by her increasingly lanky daughter. "My little monkey! I missed you!" she cooed to Paula in Spanish, gripping Paula's head in both hands and kissing her forehead, then temples, over and over again.

"Mom, you're going to have to stop saying that," Paula corrected, matter-of-fact, while adjusting herself to face forward. She sat comfortably on Raquel's lap and rested her elbows on the table as if she'd claimed her rightful throne and was sitting exactly where she belonged.

"Why's that?" Raquel asked with genuine curiosity, smoothing Paula's pigtails with her fingers, meeting his gaze and adorably lifting her shoulders and face with clownish intrigue while awaiting Paula's response. He grinned back like the lovestruck idiot that he was, raising his shoulders, too, sharing her curiosity. Nonverbal communication, while Raquel tended lovingly to Paula, always made his heart inexplicably somersault. _He'd never felt anything like it._ He was humbled that she chose to involve him in her experience of parenting; he constantly strove to live up to her trust.

"There are _actual_ monkeys here," Paula answered simply, "and now that I've seen them, I don't think I'm anything like them."

"Why not?" Raquel wondered without judgement.

"They're very _agile_," Paula described, saying the word _agile_ in English.

"That's a good word," he praised, feeling proud of Paula for her rapid language acquisition.

"Hi Sergio," Paula turned her neck to look up at him.

"Hi Paula," he replied, blinking down at her. He felt his glasses slipping due to the angle of his face. He quickly pushed them back up his nose.

"I learned new English words today."

"I can hear that," he remarked, immediately wondering why he didn't outwardly express his internal enthusiasm. Over the last few weeks, it had been his great pleasure to support her learning by helping her follow her curiosity. Sometimes, her questions about local wildlife led to long talks about ecosystems and ad hoc science experiments he'd devise. Other times, she'd grumpily make an observation that made her forehead crease, like how Philippine currency was dominated by the faces of men, which had led to an ongoing conversation about the unjust lack of representation for women and nonbinary folks in powerful institutions across the globe.

Now, Paula looked down at her fingers and touched them one-by-one as she silently mouthed words to herself, apparently determined to recall the whole new collection before sharing aloud. She'd gotten the basics of English back in school, but there was nothing like immersion plus desire. Her eyebrows furrowed in deep consternation, her fingers paused on number seven.

"Nani!" Paula called across the table to her friend who was precariously kneeling on the end of the bench beside her grandmother. Andat had managed to scootch even closer to Ramon to make room for the slight child, who was a year older than Paula but significantly smaller. She was reaching across the table to the plate of _bulad_ that Daling had been eating from all night. Like her mother, Nani appeared to relish dousing dried fish in vinegar. As she dipped and snacked on rapid repeat, Andat kept her left arm firmly around the girl's waist so she couldn't fall off the edge of the bench. "I can't remember all my new English words!" Paula complained dramatically to her friend in astonishingly expressive English.

"Don't teach them _all_ the words!" Nani laughingly reminded.

"Oh yeah..." Paula giggled, then clapped her hand to her mouth.

Nani and Paula widened their eyes at one another as they giggled about their secret.

He found it endearing and humorous that the kids seemed to think Paula might be learning words that he and Raquel didn't know. Raquel mirthfully looked at him with eyebrows raised, her lips pressed together tightly to prevent herself from laughing. He really was curious—and a bit concerned! What had Paula learned that she didn't want to share aloud? Raquel didn't look worried though, only amused, so he tried to relax into what must be a common feeling: a lack of control over exactly what one's child is learning.

"Sergio!" Paula exclaimed, evidently remembering something else and turning to him again. He raised his eyebrows expectantly to show her he was listening. "I also learned three new Visayan words today."

"Wow," he remarked. "It's exciting that you're learning by practicing. I'm impressed by how hard you're working at your language skills."

"Thank you!" Paula jauntily replied, her shoulders bopping forward and back and side to side in a little subconscious dance of pride.

Raquel smiled adoringly at him. He felt his smile deepen in return. Raquel had taught him that it was important to praise Paula for _trying_ instead of _achieving_, and for continually learning, not attaining fixed states. Apparently, that distinction had a major impact on whether a child grew into an open-minded adult who welcomed mistakes as opportunities to grow.

"Before sharing your new words," Raquel whispered into her daughter's left ear from behind, "tell us, how was your day?" His heart surged at Raquel saying _tell us_ instead of _tell me_.

"It was great!" Paula reported, then pointed to the banana leaf that had once held the sticky rice Glyceria and the baby had eaten. "I helped grate the coconut that's in that..." She bounced on her mom's lap with a realization, then twisted her neck to look back at him. "That's one of the Visayan words I learned! _B__ud-bud_. It's that sweet yummy rice that gets cooked inside a leaf." Paula motioned at him with her hand to come closer. He obligingly leaned down, as directed, hunching so his head was next to Raquel's. "Earlier today..." Paula confided, looking from his eyes to her mom's, then back again. "...we dipped _bud-bud_ in hot chocolate." She clamped her teeth together in a grin and looked at her mom with comically exaggerated innocence. He laughed warmly at her sugar confession while he sat up straight.

"I had some of that too; it was so good," Mariví shared on his left as an aside. Startled, he glanced at Mariví, noticing that although she was engaged in conversation with Imoy and Glyceria, she was also slyly watching him and Raquel interact with Paula.

"That is so cool that you got to help," Raquel reinforced sincerely while meeting Paula's gaze. Raquel raised her eyebrows playfully. "And aren't you lucky that I brought you your toothbrush!"

Paula pouted theatrically.

"Just joking!" Paula cheerily erupted, unable to playact for very long. "Don't worry, Mom. I'll brush my teeth. Did you bring my purple pajamas?"

"I did," she assured. He noticed Raquel was intentionally projecting even more calm than usual since this would be Paula's first sleepover in the Philippines. "Everything you need is in your backpack. I'll give it to Daling before we leave."

"Inday Paula," Nani called in a low voice from behind them, perhaps not wanting to interrupt the Spanish conversation. He, Raquel, and Paula turned their heads to Nani who was standing behind their bench with her hands clasped patiently behind her back. "Are you ready?" Nani wondered. Sergio smiled to himself as he realized Nani had addressed Paula with the local term of endearment, _inday_, which was lovingly used with younger female relatives or close friends.

Paula grinned at Nani and nodded, then looked up at Raquel. "Mom, I'm gonna go."

"Okay, sweetie," Raquel affirmed with an encouraging nod. "We're going to head home soon, so we should probably say goodnight."

"Okay!" Paula twisted where she sat and hugged her mom tightly with both arms, closing her eyes and pressing her cheek against Raquel's breast. "I love you."

"Oh my love," Raquel murmured while hugging her in return, gently rocking her back and forth. "I love you too." Raquel kissed the crown of her daughter's head and inhaled deeply, her chest rising as she filled her lungs.

"I'll be leaving with them, Paulita," Mariví chimed in. "So come say goodnight to me, too."

Paula's eyes opened and she smiled to herself, then quickly climbed off her mom's lap as he leaned away to give her as much disembarking space as possible.

Paula stood behind the bench and Mariví twisted her torso where she sat.

"Goodnight, Grandma," Paula announced while hugging Mariví around her middle.

"Keep having fun, okay?" Mariví encouraged as she gently embraced Paula in return.

"I will," Paula agreed as she let go.

"Goodnight, Sergio," Paula said, suddenly wrapping her arms around him from behind. _Shocked, his eyes widened and his jaw opened. Paula had never hugged him before. _Attempting to maintain composure, he twisted where he sat.

Paula seamlessly adjusted her hug as he turned, compressing him tighter once his belly was towards her, closing her eyes and resting the side of her head against his lower ribs.

He tentatively placed his hands on her little back, noticing how broad his palms looked against her spine. He was struck by how small she felt. _He felt tears well in his eyes._ She trusted him as a safe human. He was honored that she could be vulnerable with him, snuggling close and closing her eyes. He felt short of breath—but not because she was squeezing too tight. The surprising strength of her hug felt just right.

Raquel didn't believe in directing Paula to act a certain way with him, to which he staunchly agreed, so Paula had never been asked to give him a hug. Instead, every night, when darkness fell in their tiny house on stilts, Paula would bound into bed, tuck in beside her grandmother, and pull the sheet up to her chest, ready for a bedtime story from Raquel. He'd say goodnight from across the room and Paula would pleasantly return the salutation, then he'd duck into the bedroom and give the three of them time to themselves.

Now, he looked down, careful not to let his tears fall disruptively on her head. Her serenely shut eyelids and slight smile could be captioned:_ comfortable contentment._ He was feeling lightheaded, so he slowly took a deep breath and watched her cheek steadily move along with his stomach, not wanting to disturb her. It occurred to him that this hug was lasting a long time, though it was possible his inner clock was unreliable: every nanosecond had expanded with intricate somatic discoveries and new neural pathways lighting up in his brain.

Paula's grip started to loosen and her eyes blinked open. He instantly dropped his hands. She stood up straight and smiled at him with confidence. He felt himself smile in return. Her eyes sparkled knowingly, then she pivoted and scanned the nearby scene, clearly looking for Nani. Spotting her friend, who was dancing attentively with Ramon and Glyceria's toddler on the edge of the dance floor, Paula took off running without another word.

Sergio spun back around in his seat, facing forward on the bench, looking down at the backs of his hands as he placed them, dumbfounded, on the table. He desperately wanted to turn to Raquel, to see and hear what she thought...but he was feeling dry-mouthed and shy! He kept his eyes downcast and reminded himself to breathe.

He watched Raquel's hand slide over the back of his right. She left it there, not speaking—granting him space, gifting him time—letting him know she was there when he was ready. He studied the contours of her knuckles and marveled at the tender solidity of her touch. He shook his head to himself—_feeling unworthy of it all!_—wondering how he could ever live up to the abundance of love that emanated from her, her family, and their newfound community.

He glanced right, needing to see her face and confirm this was real. Her smile and eyes radiated peaceful euphoria.

"You have a new fan," Mariví's congratulatory voice remarked behind him. "Well done," she whispered with finality. He looked back at Mariví as she patted the top of his shoulder and stood. "I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who's had a memorable night." Mariví's eyes glinted and she looked across the table to Imoy, who immediately met her gaze. "This song sounds fun," she bubbled to him in English, lifting her shoulders. "A few more dances before we call it a night?"

"Dance to your heart's content," Raquel encouraged considerately. "We still need to eat, right dear?"

He nodded, helplessly wordless, still dizzy with emotion. Needing stability, his eyes sought Raquel's powerful, gentle gaze.

She squeezed the back of his knuckles where her hand rested over his, assuring him that his overwhelm was okay.

"It was a pleasure meeting you," Imoy quietly shared a valediction as he stood.

"Nice to meet you too," Raquel responded sincerely. "Thanks again. We're excited—and grateful—to buy the boat." 

Sergio mustered what he hoped was a convivial smile as Imoy and Mariví headed off towards the dance floor, a noticeable spring in each of their steps as they wove into the crowd, attentively syncing  with one another's rhythm even before their dancing resumed, smoothly  resuming their carefree air. 

"We're going to make a trip to the food table," Raquel pleasantly informed Andat, whose eyes twinkled with satisfaction over the lip of her red plastic cup. "Do any of you want anything?" Raquel stood and stepped over the bench. He immediately followed, relieved she was managing the requisite niceties.

Glyceria pointed at the _bud-bud_ remnants. "Two more of these if you see them."

"Absolutely," Raquel assented as he felt her hand slip against his. "We'll be back soon."

Raquel subtly tugged his hand and he followed her lead. He realized they were walking towards the dark perimeter of the court, away from the noise and lights, in the direction of the familiar embankment. "Do you mind strolling in the shadows instead of through the crowd?" she whispered to him needlessly while grinning knowingly. He was awestruck by how well she understood him, even and especially when he felt like a social imbecile.

They stepped off the concrete slab and into the dark, his sandaled feet immediately appreciating the loamy feel of the fern-covered earth. _He breathed a sigh of relief._ The directional floodlights were unable to reach them. Music from the speakers and joyful chatter were still loud but less obtrusive.

He watched Raquel glide slightly ahead of him as she kept ahold of his hand and charted an angled path up the sloping hillside.  His equilibrium returned with every footfall, no longer feeling like he was floating untethered. Their gradual ascension grounded him as they rose away from the intense human energy they'd been  immersed in all night.

He appreciated the village and the moving stories of their newfound friends, but he felt his shoulders relax as the soft glow of moonlight became their only visual guide and the sound of his own breathing and Raquel's footsteps pervaded the foreground of his senses. He felt the tragedies and triumphs of the widely varied human experience start to shake off his shoulders and slip off his skin and slide underfoot into the fertile sedimentary earth. He could hear himself thinking clearly again. He could feel Raquel's thumb stroking his hand. As they arrived at the familiar crest of the ridge—this time entirely private since the teenagers and their fireworks were long gone—he let out an audible sigh. They were back in the bardo.

She stopped moving and spun to face him without letting go of his hand. She was framed by a dense river of stars, her eyes shimmering with an undefinable depth, her lips—ever so slightly—curved upwards. Her other hand found his and she interlinked their fingers one by one until they were comfortably palm to palm with both hands. She lifted their bent their arms between them and stepped closer  so the font of his body and the front of hers shared a single plane of space. He inhaled deeply and was relieved to feel her sweet scent instantly overtake his senses, washing his soul in tranquility, convincing his subconscious all was okay. 

"What a night," she mused.

"What a night," he agreed.

An uncharacteristically shy smile grew on her face; he felt himself smile in return. He unclasped their hands and slid his fingers around to her knuckles. Looking at him with attentive eyes, she stepped even closer, placing her palms carefully against his chest. His fingers brushed the backs of her hands to accept and affirm her touch. She grinned broadly, then pressed her forehead against the front of his shoulder, as if embarrassed by how she felt about him. He reached all the way around her with his right arm and softly stroked the curve of her hip and curve of her lower back to transmute her needless embarrassment into rightful settledness. He placed his left hand on the back of her head and rubbed her neck through her mess of hair with his thumb and forefinger, massaging her nape as she took deep breaths, her forehead relaxing against him with each exhale. _Nothing brought him greater comfort than comforting her._

He watched her head effortlessly rise and fall as his lungs filled fully, then emptied completely.

She lifted her forehead off him and looked up. Her broad smile was intoxicating; her vibrant eyes were inebriating. "We’ve never danced together, you know," she pointed out, then lifted her eyebrows.

"There's a reason for that," he admitted hesitantly, feeling apologetic. His hands came to a stop. "I can't dance."

She canted her head endearingly, which she seemed to do whenever he unintentionally said something she adored. "Everyone can dance," she whispered correctively.

"I spent my childhood in a hospital bed. I'm confident not everyone can dance."

"Dancing isn't about moving a particular part of your body. It's about _feeling_ music and letting it overtake you."  She studied his eyes closely, waiting for his agreement. 

He felt his forehead crease as he mulled. He appreciated her genuine attempt to be inclusive, but having been a disabled child who didn't think he'd ever walk again, diluting the definition of dance felt like an irritating platitude. 

"What's your favorite kind of music?" she asked with interest, trying a different tack.

"Mozart."

She lovingly laughed, eyes sparkling. "What _other_ music do you like?" she asked again, barely suppressing her mirth. "And I don't just mean when you want  to meditate." 

He opened his mouth to protest. Classical music wasn't for meditation! It told epic stories of triumph and defeat. It painted tableaus of love and death! He realized he was stroking her waist and neck with consuming passion while the symphonic swells coursed through him from memory. He grinned as he noticed her eyes soften—then dilate—apparently taking pleasure in his touch.

"What  about a song that stirs your soul?" Raquel breathily prompted further.

"You mean a song that makes me feel alive?" he asked in a low voice, feeling provocative.

"Yes...” she assented as her eyelids fluttered involuntarily, clearly relishing the brush of his fingers on the nape of her neck. "Yes...exactly..."

"Tchaikovsky's  _Symphony No. 6_, _Pateticheskaya_."

Her body dissolved into kindhearted unrestrained giggles.

He silently laughed too, privileged to support her as she vibrated under his hands.

She buried her face against his chest and breathed in, regaining her composure while smoothly sliding her hands around to his back, then up to his shoulder blades. She tipped her head back to look up at him again. "Do you feel this song in your body right now?" she checked, referring to the nondescript tune rising off the court and up the hill. The song was objectively bland compared to the emotionally layered orchestral pieces he wanted to share with her, but at least it wasn't disruptive like the bass that had been blasting all night.

"How do you mean?" he wondered.

"Like this beat. It’s so simple and predictable."  She popped one shoulder up and down, which was charming—the glint in her eye indicated that she knew it. 

He reflexively grinned, uncontrollably smitten. 

"Do you feel that rhythm anywhere in your body?" she followed up.

He nodded shyly.

"Let yourself move. Let your body feel the bass line."  She stepped back and let her hands fall away from him. 

He stared as the movement of her single shoulder diffused throughout her body—flowing across her trapezius to her other shoulder, then down to her waist, then down to her hips.  The invisible music was rendered visible through her movement. Subtly, she channeled it, back and forth, up and down—dynamic infinity signs drawn again and again with her hips and waist and shoulders and smile. 

He smiled reciprocally, unexpectedly stirred, feeling a sensory thread  weave between his fluid mind, his molten heart, his resistant rigid body. The unseen thread traveled easily through his calcified compartmentalized self, challenging his conception of consciousness, tugging his disparate pieces together into a singular integrated identity.

He looked down the length of his body and saw he still wasn't moving. Not at all. Not even a tiny bit.

"It's okay," she cooed in a hushed tone.

But he felt it!—or he felt _something_ anyway—a desire maybe? He wanted to join her, he did. He wanted her to feel met in every way, even this new way, this unfamiliar way, this frightening way. _But desire wasn't enough._ He needed knowledge. He needed skill. He needed experience. 

_ He had none of it. _

"I'm sorry that I don't know how to do this right," he apologized, still staring downward, disappointedly shaking his head at his unmoving feet.

"Sweetheart..." she soothed.

What if he _couldn't_ be everything Raquel needed? What if he was _incapable_ of performing the most important parts? Being her partner, nurturing her child,  moving through the vast ungraspable world in  harmonized synchronized movement? 

"Sergio," she intoned, causing him to look up at her—summoned by his name on her lips. 

Her eyes shone with affectionate protectiveness—but protection from whom? 

"There's no right or wrong way to dance," she assured kindly. "That's like saying there's a right and wrong way to make love."

"Do you remember back in Madrid when we were negotiating..." He swallowed, increasingly self-conscious. "I asked if you'd ever faked an orgasm, and you said..."

"I remember," she acknowledged with a smirk and pronounced eye roll.

His gaze dropped to his feet again.  "...Well, I don't know who you were talking about, of course, but, certainly, whomever you were with was doing _something_ wrong."

He heard her snicker joyfully, then  laugh  ebulliently; she sounded unable to contain her mirth. 

Despite his discomfort and downcast eyes, he felt himself smile, too. _He loved making her laugh—whether or__ not he intended to. _He noticed her little wiggling toes inch closer to him and he realized that he felt existentially fulfilled whenever he ignited happiness in  this human being he loved.  Other people thought he was overly serious.  Yet, she found him funny. It was one of the countless ways she saw him like no one else did. Maybe it was because he _felt_ funnier, looser, more playful with her than ever before in his life. _She_ made him feel those ways. _She_ opened the vault of his soul. _She _made it okay for him to be imperfect, to not have all the answers, to be messily human.

The distant music shifted downtempo, the new song opening with an emotive, unadorned guitar riff.

Raquel mewed with pleasure. 

His eyes shot up with curiosity. 

She was smiling sweetly at him, nostalgic and doe-eyed, her head swaying gently as an extension of her supple spine, feeling the music in a way that distinctly radiated _Raquel—_specifically, _Raquel_ tonight, _Raquel _right here, _Raquel _in this liminal space and time. Maybe every dance that someone did was different, characterized by the incomparable fleeting moment, a unique expression of one's ever-evolving soul.

The enchanting strums were smoothly joined by the melodic lilt of a piano, the two instruments moving around and through one another like perfect partners, filling out the sound, filling in the void. A soft drum brush seamlessly entered, providing a grounding, soothing backbeat.

She flowed right up against him, wrapping her arms around his lower back, the front of her body swaying fluidly, rhythmically, against his unmoving form. _He wanted to match her!_ He placed his hands stiffly on her back—one high, one low—but the rest of him remained frozen, unsure what to do or how to do it. 

"You know this song?" he confirmed.

"Van Morrison," she answered with a smile. He shrugged, unsure if that was a song name or a band name. She kept unswerving eye contact as she rocked, side to side, beneath his unimaginative palms. She opened her mouth to sing along as a vocalist began.

"_We were born before the wind_

_Also younger than the sun_

_Ere the bonnie boat was won_

_As we sailed into the mystic_..."

She seemed to know every lyric in perfect English. The male voice was haunting yet hopeful, melding with the guitar and piano and drums so effortlessly, it was like another instrument in the sublimely simple symphony.

"_Hark, now hear the sailors cry_

_Smell the sea and feel the sky_

_Let your soul and spirit fly_

_Into the mystic..._"

Was it the lyrics conjuring a sensory experience or did the unembellished instruments somehow _sound_ like water and wind? He thought he heard the expansive ocean off the coast of Portugal—sonorous, resonant, full of promise, full of pain—having just lost his brother, having just escaped Spain, feeling doubtful yet hopeful he'd ever see Raquel again. He also heard a year's worth of mournful Palawan wind, gliding off the sea by night, blowing through him and around him as he drove alone up the coast by motorbike. A bass guitar and saxophone added to the atmospheric sound as Raquel sang expressively, communicating unwaveringly into his eyes, making it clear that he was the intended recipient of every word, and that she meant every line.

_"And when that fog horn blows_

_I will be coming home, mmm mmm_

_And when the fog horn blows_

_I want to hear it_

_I don't have to fear it..." _

She beautifully belted the last line, throwing her head back, singing her pronouncement to the infinite starry sky! Perhaps the Milky Way was the ethereal ocean the two of them eternally sailed upon, finding one another lifetime after lifetime, here in physical form. She was right; the song was right. There was no need to fear anything because their connection was everything—and there was no earthly force that could keep their incorporeal souls apart. Her sparkling eyes returned to his and she grinned euphorically, singing at him with intention.

"_And_ _IIIIIIIII wanna rock your gypsy soul_

_Just like way back in the days of old_

_Then magnificently we will float_

_Into the mystic._"

The sounds of water and wind swelled into an instrumental bridge. He was still standing as inflexibly as before, increasingly embarrassed that she was patiently waiting, her own body moving breezily. "Would you dance with me?" she whispered affectionately.

His heart cried _yes! _as he shook his head, apologetic."Raquel, I would love to, but that's an impossibility, since, as I've said, I don't know how to dance. And I won't say _yes_ to something I can't deliver on. I always keep my promises."

Her smile deepened adoringly, then her eyes twinkled. "In that case, would you sway with me?"

"Yes," he answered confidently, surprising himself with his immediate unexamined response. "Yes. That I think I can handle," he realized aloud.

Her curved lips and coy eyes appeared satisfied. She gripped him tighter, pressing the front of her body against his.

He reciprocated with a needy instinctive grip as the bridge drew to a close. She lay her cheek on his sternum; he rested his chin on her head. He took a deep breath and let the music softly carry his body in time with hers. He stopped trying to guess how to move and what to do. He trusted that she loved him regardless, despite the missteps he'd made and missteps yet to come.

"_When that fog horn blows_

_You know I will be coming home..._"

Tears pooled in his eyes as he felt the side of her cheek moving against his chest, hearing her sing with prescient gravity, as if intentionally giving him this moment as a somatic memory—a vivid snapshot of her assurance that if they were ever separated, she'd find her way back to him, and that he only need listen to the wind, to the waves, to the foghorn, signaling her return. He clutched her closer as they swayed, imagining his arms were welcoming her home after a harrowing time alone.

"_When that fog horn whistle blows_

_I gotta hear it_

_I don't have to fear it_

_and IIIIIIII wanna rock your gypsy soul_

_just like way back in the daaaays of old..."_

His eyes fell shut and he felt her hips and waist and shoulders swing softly back and forth against him—guiding him, leading him, similarly needing him. With a hum of satisfaction, he realized that her movement wasn't a mystery: he always knew where she would be—because he was there, too.

"_And together we will float_

_into the mystic..._"

Her fingers pressed into his back as the vocals melted into the sea and the guitar and piano and sax carried them where they wanted to be. The unseeable music swirled around her and him, generously gifting them with a way to synchronize without needing to strategize, to be coordinated without having to coordinate, to communicate without having to articulate. Dance—_if indeed that's what this was_—was a form of magic accessible to mere mortals. Sightlessly, the movement of his body conveyed that he was here for her, evermore. He prayed that she'd safely tuck this feeling away, so that if ever they were separated someday, no captor could extract it—she'd always be able to access it.

As they swayed to what sounded like the end of the song, his jaw still resting atop her head,  he caressed her lower back while strumming his other hand up her spine, finding his way through her hair to rub her nape in melodic time. He opened his eyes to the stream of hopeful yet haunting stars,  overtaken by an aural crescendo of longing and loss and love.

"_Too late to stop now._"

The lyric surprised him, arising out of the instrumentation, long after he'd thought all the words to the song were done.

_Indeed. It was too late to stop now._

The reverberations from their love were irrevocable. The ripple effect of their choices had changed lives. He had taken calculated risks before; they were necessary to orchestrate the heist. But by far, the biggest risk he'd ever taken in life wasn't calculated at all. It was the one that took him by surprise.

By its nature, love required vulnerability.  It required an openness of the soul.

That's why love was inherently dangerous.

And from the moment he'd started tumbling into love with Raquel, it was a danger he acknowledged, a danger he accepted, a danger he celebrated—because without it, he wouldn't be holding her now.

Love was always a risk.

One he lived with every day.

One that made life worth living.

_ One he refused to live without. _

The song stopped and so did their swaying.

She lifted her cheek off his chest and looked up without letting go. With a firm grip on his shoulder blades, she coyly raised her eyebrows and pressed her lips together, inviting him to concede that it wasn't so bad—that _he_ wasn't so bad. She clearly wanted him to be the first to say it, so he would hear it and believe it and draw confidence from it.

He silently laughed, then nodded with agreement, feeling his grin stretch so broadly that his cheeks hurt.

Since childhood, he'd let his imagination fly away from his body, escaping the world through the words in his books, unfettered by his immobile legs, his atrophied muscles, the painfully  cheery smiles of the orphanage nurses whose sympathetic eyes revealed secret pity. After forty years of practice, he'd dissociated his mind and body, so used to separating himself _from_ himself, it'd been easy to inhabit incomplete alter egos: the Professor, Salva, the repressed younger brother of Andrés de Fonollosa. 

After only three weeks of dancing through life with Raquel, every disparate instrument was fusing within him. She had shown him how to sew his soul back together—his thoughts, his feelings, his words, his actions.

Even now, she gazed up at him—grinning euphorically, eyes glimmering knowingly—wordlessly reminding him that she absolutely loved all of him.

He heard a new crystalline backbeat that was steady and steadying, self-assured and calming. But it wasn't coming from a song; it was coming from inside. His heartbeat thudded with the same stabilizing force that emanated from her eyes.

She held him closer; he clutched her tight, beyond grateful for this moment, for the gift of this night, and for the feeling of being _singularly_ human for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *nervously grimacing and pacing, wondering whether the length of this chapter finally tried the patience of even the most devoted of readers*
> 
> I can't wait to hear from you. <3 As you know by now, I welcome feedback of any kind and learn from all of it. 
> 
> So, thank you in advance for taking the time to comment in whatever way feels right to you. I appreciate you! <3


	11. Chapter 11

Raquel felt herself smile as she became aware of the familiar _whirrrrr. _She looked up from her salt-covered hands as she sat in a low squat on her favorite mangrove log. Squinting into the early evening sun, her grin deepened as their trusty green boat rumbled her direction.

"Looks like our adventurers are on their way back," Raquel's mom pipped up.

Raquel turned to the right and gazed affectionately at her mom who stood by the fish drying rack, tying a cleaned, salted fish to the wooden crossbeam. The _danggit_ fish hung alongside the others, ready for the sun, air, and time to transform the fresh catch into a snack or emergency meal.

Raquel felt her bare feet nestle snugly into the sand. She glanced down and noticed how dark the tops of her toes had become after calling this secluded beach home three months. She sighed with contentment, then immediately realized her exhale was loud enough for Imoy to hear. To her left, the white-haired septuagenarian smiled without looking up from his work. Like her, he was seated on the dried mangrove root she'd dragged out of the jungle.  He was deftly slicing open and gutting a fish with the small knife he always brought with him on _bulad-_making days like this one. He passed her the perfectly halved _danggit_ and she received it with both hands, meeting his sparkling eyes with a nod. 

She leaned over the bamboo workbench he'd helped her construct and carefully placed the fish in the metal tray filled with salt.  As she thoroughly rubbed salt onto one side, then the other, she recalled how even a month ago, her thighs complained about this type of squat; now, nothing felt more natural than sitting in a crouch with her elbows resting comfortably on her knees, while her hands busied themselves with a task.

Smiling nostalgically to herself, she realized that some of the best recurring memories of her life had taken place while sitting on this mangrove root. 

At sunrise, she and Sergio would sit side by side, grating cassava or coconut, so that when Paula awoke, they could make breakfast _bud-bud_ together. As she and Sergio sipped their hand-ground coffee and worked to the vibrant soundscape of morning bird chatter, they'd reflect and laugh quietly  about  the previous day, every once in a while falling silent and turning to one another, their eyelids uncontrollably fluttering, then delicately, expressively kissing one another with meaning and portent that took her breath away. She loved their ritual of greeting the dawn together, relishing each other's company in the hushed hour before her mother and daughter stirred. His tender lips always tasted like the promise of another day—and every one of their blissful days together had delivered.

At noon, she'd often move the log to the midday shade of the palm grove in order to play_sungka_ with Paula, who'd eagerly dig parallel rows of holes in the dirt, then collect small shells from the receding tide to use as playing pieces. Paula's friend Nani had taught her the local game, and Paula had delighted in teaching it to Raquel, her grandmother, and Sergio. They'd frequently make a household bracket, the four of them playing in a mini-tournament, taking turns watching each other's matches, Paula hopping from foot to foot with barely contained excitement as she giggled at surprise moves and teasing banter, tracking the drama until the overall winner was crowned. They'd playfully title each tournament for something happening at the time, like the Plantain Harvest Cup, when the four of them had spent a strenuous morning trekking deep into the jungle, Sergio frequently carrying a tired Paula on his back while Raquel used a sickle lashed to a bamboo pole to cut down plantain bunches to haul home and store. A piece of driftwood they'd erected by the front steps of the house served as their running _sungka_ leaderboard, Paula in charge of ceremoniously carving a notch beside the name of whomever had won that day's tournament.

In the late afternoon, if the scalding sun was hidden behind the clouds, Raquel would give Paula the go ahead to play in the water. Sometimes, Raquel would join her daughter and Sergio for the next installment of their swimming lessons, which usually devolved into riotous laughter as Sergio earnestly tried and endearingly floundered, goodnaturedly laughing at himself and modeling for Paula how to persistently embrace one's mistakes. As the three of them stood laughing, splashing one another, it was all Raquel could do to keep herself from jumping him. _She hadn't known it was possible to grow more enamored with him each day!_ Other times, she’d drag the mangrove log down to the wet sand and sit, letting the tide lap at her ankles as Paula and Sergio practiced their newfound skills in the shallows, each of them surreptitiously glancing up at her after propelling themselves under the water for a few seconds, trying to appear nonchalant but obviously eager for her approval. She'd call out encouragement and flash a thumbs up between turning the pages of a book she'd gotten from the expat bookshop on one of her rare trips to Puerto Princesa.

One of the precautions they took was to never go on supply runs together, since if anyone was searching for them, they'd be more recognizable as a pair. So he'd go alone or she'd go with Paula, and they’d steer clear of the Puerto Princesa population centers, giving a wide berth to the police stations, and never setting foot near the malls. Today, Sergio had planned a city trip to prepare for the upcoming rainy season, based on Imoy's suggestion that they stock up on tarps and rope. Paula had surprised them both by waking up before dawn, noiselessly creeping across the house to the foot of their bed, then startling them awake with her announcement that she wanted to go with Sergio on his day trip. Raquel had sat up with a start, grateful they slept clothed in case something like this happened. Sergio had hurriedly reached for his glasses on the nightstand and scooted up to a sitting position too. He'd blinked at Raquel with his mouth slightly agape, clearly overwhelmed by Paula's overture. Raquel had assuringly squeezed his leg under the sheet while telling Paula it sounded like a terrific idea. After breakfast, as Raquel had prepared her daughter for the day—putting sunscreen in her little backpack and reminding her to wear her hat—she'd resisted the urge to ask Paula why she'd wanted to go. Did she simply have the hankering to get away from the beach or did she want to spend time with Sergio? Raquel tried to avoid conveying expectations to Paula about how to feel about Sergio's presence in her life, believing Paula should remain free to decide for herself what she wanted their relationship to be.

"I hope they had a good time," Raquel wished aloud, gazing with longing at their weathered green boat, its simple engine like her heart, growing louder as Paula and Sergio neared shore.

"Of course they did," Raquel's mom warmheartedly admonished. Raquel realized her mom was standing expectantly beside her. "I think you've salted it enough, dear.”

Raquel laughed at herself for being lost in reverie, then passed the overly salted fish to her mother, who thanked her with a knowing smile and carried it off towards the drying rack.

Raquel squinted back at their humble boat. Her heart leapt ecstatically as she spotted Paula in the bow, jumping with her arms in the air so she could be easily seen.  "Mom!" Paula's exuberant call traveled magically across the water.

"See?" Raquel's mom cheekily quipped while affixing the fish beside the others, as if that one joyous word was proof Paula had a great day. "Shall we wash up?"

Raquel looked left and saw Imoy was already cleaning off the shared workbench, scraping the innards he used for chumming into a jar reserved for that purpose. The yellow bucket beside him must have been empty; the three of them had worked efficiently.

"Good timing," Imoy remarked with a congenial smile, followed by a fond nod towards the boat that was once his family's. As he stood, softly gazing across the water, Raquel wondered if he was reminiscing about his beloved deceased wife and how they'd ferried people to Boracay, him driving and cleaning their little boat while she hawked tickets and chatted with passengers.

Raquel picked up the salt tray, then stood and followed a chatting Imoy and her mom, who were walking side by side towards the house, carrying the tools, bucket, and workbench in need of disinfecting. As they all headed for the outdoor spigot—which her household used daily to wash their bare feet or clean up after chores like these—Raquel glanced over her shoulder reflexively, irrationally worried the boat would accelerate suddenly and reach shore without her being there to welcome Paula.

"You wash up first and go greet them," her mom offered, taking the salt try from her hands as they all arrived by the house. "Imoy and I will take care of everything." Imoy smiled affirmatively and opened the spigot with a nod towards Raquel.

Raquel didn't protest. Knowing that she treasured doing any task with Sergio—even the tedious, strenuous, or seemingly mundane—she imagined her mom and Imoy would enjoy the cleanup chore in one another's company, so she nodded appreciatively, then soaped up and rinsed off.

"When we're done, we'll stroll up the beach until you or Sergio call us in for dinner," her mom elaborated while Imoy nodded, confirming their plan.

Raquel felt awestruck, yet again, that Palawan had been a dam against her mom's encroaching dementia. Raquel suspected the respite was a combination of clean air, sensory stimulation, and the harmonious routine of their home life. Sergio had privately titled it _Mariví's renaissance_, which adorably included the budding romance between her mom and Imoy. Her mom's distinct enjoyment of her new life helped assuage Raquel's guilt that she'd selfishly ripped her mother away from her country, her community, and her youngest daughter, Laura.

"Go on, dear, we've got it from here," her mom gently prodded as she and Imoy crouched by the spigot, washing the empty bucket.

Raquel thanked the cheery pair and spun around.

The boat was close enough that she could see both her daughter and lover clearly. _Her heart raced, uncontrollably. _Paula was smiling and waving from the bow; Sergio was at the wheel under the shaded driver's hut. Raquel broke into a sprint before she realized she had—her bare feet pounding against the sand, kicking it up as she ran, the fresh air filling her lungs, exhilarated from the oxygen, or the anticipation, of reuniting with the two loves of her life.

Breathing deeply, she arrived at the edge of the tide just as Sergio cut the engine to let the boat coast to shore. He leaned out from under the compartment, one hand still on the wheel. He met her gaze with a handsome grin.

_She felt lovestruck all over again._

His dazzling dimples appeared in return; his beautiful eyes sparkled with gratitude and mirth. _He looked as smitten as she felt._

He nodded once and tossed the heavy rope coil her direction. It landed at her feet with a splash. She swiftly rolled up her pants and waded forward, capturing the end of the rope with both hands, then jogging in the shallows towards the wooden mooring pile. She quickly tied a temporary clove hitch, then jogged back towards the paint-chipped hull as it drifted slowly towards shore, coaxed forward by the mellow waves.

"Here you go, Mom!" Paula was bent over in the prow of the boat, futilely trying to hike up the massive traveler's pack Raquel had hauled across the world on her back when she'd made the bold decision to leave Spain.

"I can get that, Paula!” Sergio called out warmly. “You don't need to worry.” He kindheartedly chuckled as he locked the rudder into place and emerged from the steering compartment. Raquel's heart swelled as she saw how Sergio gazed at her daughter: his authentic smile was adoring; he seemed endeared by her desire to help. "Let's lift it together," he patiently suggested while he came up behind her, since she'd stubbornly refused to give up. His attentive eyes remained on Paula, giving her a chance to push from the bottom as he heaved the supply-run backpack over the edge of the boat into Raquel's waiting hands.

"Thank you, my dears," she replied as she received the pack, then swung it around to her back and clipped the buckle over her pelvis so the weight rested on her hips.

"You ready?" Sergio conscientiously asked Paula.

"Yep!"

He put his broad hands on her sides, then lifted her up and over the rail into Raquel's outstretched arms. Paula, like a koala, wrapped her appendages around Raquel as best she could; Raquel's lower back muscles strained. The combined weight of the backpack and her daughter was unsustainable, yet Raquel felt relieved to be reunited as she clutched Paula to her chest and waded the short distance to shore. "I missed you," Raquel murmured as they reached dry sand. Paula glanced back over her own shoulder and slid down, extending her long legs and touching her sandals to the ground.

Paula smiled broadly and started hopping from foot to foot, her little backpack bumping against her back, as if she was bursting at the seams with a secret.

"What are you grinning about?" Raquel asked with curiosity, delighted that her daughter looked so happy.

Paula gazed past Raquel and widened her eyes in what appeared to be a signal to Sergio. Raquel spun around just as Sergio finished rolling up his pants and nodded obligingly to Paula.

Sergio placed his strong hands on the wooden boat rail, then nimbly used his shoulders to hoist himself up and over the side of the boat, gorgeously landing with a splash in the knee-deep water. She felt herself raise her eyebrows, intrigued, as he reached back over the railing for something he'd apparently leaned against the boat’s inner edge. He lifted into view a modest electronic keyboard as Paula squealed with excitement.

"Sergio is gonna teach me to play piano!" Paula bubbled as Sergio looked hesitantly at Raquel, evidently wondering what she thought.

"What a great idea," Raquel marveled as her heart melted and Paula hurried down to the water’s edge. Raquel watched her daughter's back as she bounced with unbound enthusiasm just beyond the reach of the lapping tide.

Sergio moved slowly towards them, carefully carrying the keyboard in front of him, diligently preventing water from splashing up. "Don't worry, Mom, it wasn't expensive," Paula chattered without turning, apparently keeping her eyes glued to the keyboard. "We found it in the secondhand shop." As Sergio stepped onto dry land, Paula eagerly took the keyboard from him with both arms, then turned around proudly and beamed. "I'm going to practice a lot!"

"I'm thrilled for you, sweetie," Raquel reiterated as Sergio jogged to the mooring pile to release the temporary hitch and secure a figure-eight knot.

Raquel watched her tenacious daughter furrow her brow to herself, probably realizing the keyboard was too heavy for her to carry up to the house on her own.

Sergio ran back, seeing the need, too. "Let me help you, Paula," he supportively offered, swooping in to take the keyboard from Paula's trembling arms. "After all, I need _something_ to carry." Paula nodded and grimaced, then shook out her elbows, obviously relieved for the help and the chance to save face.

He slid the keyboard under his right arm as Paula buoyantly skipped up the beach towards the house, her pigtails flying, her purple backpack thumping against her back.

Sergio met Raquel's eyes. The golden-hour light caused him to glow angelically against the sea and cloudless sky. His irises shimmered with profound happiness and shy hope.

_My god she loved him._

"Paula remembered that you said I played..." he intoned as he started to close the meters between them.

They'd spent 100 unbroken days together, yet seeing him step gracefully towards her still made her heart pound.

"...she grabbed my hand in the store and pulled me over to it..." His dimples flickered with bashful exultation. "...Her argument was pretty convincing; I thought you'd appreciate it. She said that if she was in regular school—not in school with you and me—she'd have music classes; and that therefore I owed her piano lessons."

Raquel tilted her neck back, maintaining eye contact as he came within reach. She felt warmth radiating off his body. She felt entranced by the loopy grin he only shared with her.

Instinctively, she glanced left to see where her daughter was. Paula had run past the house and was headed for her grandmother who had strolled up the beach with Imoy.

Raquel whipped her head back to Sergio and reached up with both hands, pulling his neck towards her as her own eyes fell closed.

She felt his chaste lips press softly against hers.

_His mouth tasted like comfort and the need to be comforted._

Despite their trusted network of hackers and handlers who kept an eye on the web and the streets, anytime they were apart, they risked not being reunited. He quietly whimpered as if his subconscious had only now realized he was back at port, safe at home, safe with her. His vulnerable sound ignited a fire between her legs. The dangerously combustable spark traveled to her lower abdomen, then shot like a firecracker up her spine.

Without thinking, she dug her fingers into the nape of his neck like she often did when they were making love. Her clutch seemed to trigger a pavlovian response that increased the fervor of his kiss; his mouth opened, responding passionately to hers. She unintentionally moaned and the last of his chaste restraint disappeared. She felt his tongue explore hers, his free hand stroking her hip with equally amorous intent.

Succumbing to the hunger between her legs, she rolled her pelvis forward, then gasped into their kiss as she felt his delicious hardness, not knowing that he was just as turned on. One recent night, he'd breathily confessed that nothing aroused him more than knowing she was aroused; she'd laughed against his collarbone and paused rubbing herself against him, whispering that she felt exactly the same.

Now, standing in broad daylight, she knew they both sensed the danger, they both knew the risk, so she loosened her grip on his neck and he slowed the caress of her thigh.

His mouth pulled away and she almost cried out with regret, except that she felt his steamy breath on her cheek, then jaw, roving down towards her neck.

Indulgently, without opening her eyes, she tilted her head back and to the side. She’d never exposed herself to someone more than she exposed herself to him; she felt infinitely safe baring her soul and skin. His hot exhales on the side of her neck both stimulated and soothed her. The soft brush of his beard was deeply familiar, deeply private, a sensation only she knew—a reminder of the intimacy they shared.

Though she was delighting in him nuzzling her neck, she became aware that the heavy backpack was hurting her shoulders; the keyboard under his arm kept clunking her on the side. She giggled and opened her eyes.

He lifted his face off her neck and gazed down at her contentedly. “Hi," he understatedly greeted, then deliriously grinned, perhaps noticing the huskiness of his own voice.

"Welcome home,” she whispered, mirroring his smile. She suddenly felt embarrassed by just how infatuated she was with him.

He reached up with his free hand and caressed her cheek, clearly trying to assuage her self-doubt, his trembling pupils communicating that he was with her in this love-bubble, too.

Thankful for the sweet assurance, she turned her neck and laid her cheek against his chest. She heard his heartbeat and relished the feeling of his fingers making their way through her wind-tangled hair. He slowly massaged the nape of her neck with intent and care.

She felt his nose and lips graze the crown of her head. "I missed you," he intoned helplessly, then audibly inhaled, as if filling his lungs with her presence.

She straightened her spine and gazed into his soulful brown eyes. She slipped her hand against his and squeezed, indicating she was ready to head in. He nodded, then looked up the beach.

Paula appeared to be animatedly describing her music-instrument find to her grandmother and Imoy, gesturing their direction, probably pointing out the keyboard under Sergio's arm.

"So how did it go?" Raquel prompted, turning her neck to gaze at his winsome profile as they strolled towards the house, hand in hand.

"You'll have to ask Paula, of course..." he considerately mused. “From my perspective, I think it went well," he cautiously admitted. "Very well, actually." His crescent dimple flashed, momentarily.

Raquel felt her heart surge so intensely, it pained her chest. She'd always thought that if Sergio was just himself with Paula, she'd naturally grow to trust him and even adore him. If Raquel was reading her bounding daughter correctly, today had been a milestone in how Paula felt.

"Sergio!" Paula called out, running at full speed towards them as her grandmother and Imoy continued their walk the other direction. "Can we do our first lesson now?" she asked eagerly as she skidded to a stop on the short flagstone path that led up to the house.

Raquel and Sergio arrived in front of her, beneath the ficus tree.

"Your mom and I are going to cook dinner now," he answered with a warm matter-of-factness that Raquel suspected her daughter appreciated.

Paula nodded without speaking, obviously containing her disappointment. She pivoted on the balls of her feet, then curved up the path towards the house. Raquel and Sergio followed, passing the potted hibiscus and crepe ginger they were cultivating.

"It’s okay," Raquel remarked to Sergio as she slipped off the backpack and placed it on the sand beside the three front steps. "I can prep ingredients while you show her a little."

He opened his mouth, perhaps to ask if she was sure, but he paused, evidently understanding that her pointedly raised eyebrows meant she'd already made up her mind. He nodded once with agreement. Paula—closely observing the unspoken exchange—cheered with delight.

As they unpacked the giant backpack and sorted fresh groceries from long-term supplies, carrying armloads up the steps into their open-sided house, back and forth in a three-person train, Paula adorably jabbered, updating Raquel on her and Sergio’s day.

"...then we road a blue _jeepney _that was painted with red flowers and green vines_..._” she vividly described. Paula was fascinated by _jeepneys_. The long metal vehicles with two inward-facing benches were the most common public transports in the Philippines. Though they were woefully polluting gas guzzlers, Raquel loved them, too. “...When we saw the _jeepney_ from the side, it looked like the painted vines went up and over the edge of the window into where the passengers sat..." Every _jeepney_ had a singular personality, reflective of its driver-owner, making Philippine roads reminiscent of nature's biodiversity, not human homogeneity. "...The _jeepney's _name was Mama Kikay."

"How do you know it had a name?" Raquel inquired with a chuckle as Sergio passed a pair of mason jars from the backpack up to Raquel's waiting hands. He and Paula had apparently taken the time to swing by the _taho_ vendor to fill up on sweet silken tofu floating in syrup. Raquel amusedly shook her head; since her mom, Paula, and Sergio bonded over having a sweet tooth, she let more sugar into their cupboards than she would've liked.

"I read the words on its side!" Paula replied proudly, closely trailing Raquel like a heeling puppy, up the steps into their airy front room. "The yellow swirly letters said, _Mama Kikay: in re-mem-brance of self-less-ness and joy_." Paula pronounced each syllable slowly, impressively recalling the complex English words from memory.

"Paula practiced reading Visayan and English all day," Sergio praised as he followed them through the front room into the adjoining open kitchen, then around the island counter. Raquel opened the fridge and slid the _taho_ onto the top shelf as Paula slipped in front of her and tucked the scallions she was carrying into the veggie drawer. Sergio reached easily over both of their heads and rolled a huge unopened jackfruit to a resting spot on top of the fridge.

"We sat next to a pig and three chickens on the _jeepney_..." Paula interrupted her own story to giggle. The three of them flowed back around the island, returning through their breezy house with its notably absent interior walls, hopping quickly down the steps for what looked like one last load. "...it was so crowded, there were teenagers hanging off the back!" Paula vibrantly shared as Sergio reached deep into the bottom of the backpack and pulled out a tightly folded bundle of tarps and coiled rope. "I told Sergio I should sit on his lap so more people could fit inside."

He passed the supplies up to Raquel and bashfully grinned, evidently touched by how safe Paula felt with him. Raquel smiled at him approvingly while loading up her arms with tarps, heavy rope, and a clanking collection of carabiners.

Standing and turning to Paula with his hand in the breast pocket of his white _barong_, he produced a small tube. "Don't forget the paint for your sign."

"Oh, yeah! Thank you." Paula merrily reached up and took it from his hand. "Mom, I'm going to paint my name on a sign to hang outside my bedroom."

"Good plan," Raquel replied, her heart filling with pride as she looked at her daughter who somehow looked older today than she did yesterday. Raquel was glad they'd given Paula one of the rooms with closed doors so she could feel a sense of control as she continued to individuate. "By the way, how do you feel about me storing these supplies in your playhouse overnight?" Raquel checked, indicating the weighty supplies in her arms. "We'll find a permanent storage spot tomorrow."

Paula scrunched up her forehead in thought. "Sure," she assented with a conclusive nod. Raquel stifled a laugh at the unintended mimicry: Sergio often fell into a pensive silence, followed by a decisive nod.

"We'll see you inside," he confirmed quietly, his fingers lightly brushing the small of Raquel's back, his shining eyes revealing that he'd noticed Paula's emulation, too.

He picked up the keyboard and handed the now empty backpack to Paula. As the two of them jogged up the steps into the front room, past the gauzy curtains that were tied back to frame the entrance to their open-sided home, Paula fired off a string of questions about how to read music as Sergio chuckled, perhaps tickled by Paula's outpouring of curiosity.

Raquel headed around the outside of the house, past their clothesline, towards the bamboo shelter they'd built for Paula by the breadfruit tree. It had been a perfect project for their second month in the house, and had been a great excuse to learn building techniques from Imoy. Once he'd showed them how to split bamboo and create a raised platform, and how to thatch a protective roof, she and Sergio had been able to execute. Raquel wasn't yet ready to let Paula swing a machete, so she'd focused her daughter on weaving palm fronds while Raquel did the chopping and hauling, and Sergio lashed joists with sturdy rope.

While Raquel sweated through the physical task, swinging the machete downward from over her head with both hands, she'd thought about how the palm frond roof was designed to repel water like the coconut trees themselves—mimicking nature, instead of fighting it, integrating with it, instead of trying to control it, tangibly acknowledging that they were guests on this stretch of beach, and that long after she and her loved ones were gone, the ocean and wind and sand would remain, the earth reinventing itself continually, reincarnating new configurations of water and air and land, epoch after epoch. She found it comforting to remind herself of the scale of the universe and scope of time. It was easy to get caught up in the heaviness of her choices, otherwise.

Ever since the handmade structure had been complete, Raquel often noticed Paula sitting on the edge of the little platform, her legs swinging forward and back, gazing down at the ocean, singing herself songs she'd made up, shaded from the sun beneath the roof she'd helped weave. It was moments like these that gave Raquel hope that this unconventional upbringing could serve her daughter well.

Paula had never been a kid who needed many boisterous pals as long as she had one friend who was truly kind. Thankfully, Daling's daughter, Nani, had been a great friend already; though living a boat ride away meant Paula was alone with Raquel, her grandmother, and Sergio most days. Paula didn't complain. She had an active imagination so the immersion in nature and ample quiet time seemed to be nurturing her growing mind. Sergio had been largely self-taught, proving that unfettered by the constraints of institutionalized schooling, it was possible for individuals to drive their own learning. Paula voraciously pursued projects of her own ideation while they supported her to design experiments, answer big questions, and deeply explore interests that emerged. They'd go on long beach walks together, taking turns answering Paula's queries as honestly as they could, believing there was nothing better than the socratic method and hands-on learning to help a hungry young mind to thrive.

Sergio was also charmingly devoted to fostering Paula's social development. He didn’t want her to repeat his socially maladjusted childhood, so he supportively shuttled Paula to Daling's village at least twice a week. And on weekends, when Imoy was planning to visit Raquel's mom, Imoy would swing by the village to pick up Nani from her mom's _sari-sari_ store, giving the kid a ride in his old fishing boat. Mechanically-minded Glyceria had insisted on outfitting Imoy's simple _bangka_ with a recycled water-pump motor so that the stubbornly active septuagenarian didn't always have to paddle. On mornings when the single-cylinder engine distinctly sputtered their direction, Raquel's mother and daughter would run down to the edge of the tide, Raquel futilely reminding them to stay out of the sun, their palms alternating from enthusiastic waves to shielding glare from their eyes as they watched their companions sail to shore.

Now, as Raquel finished stacking the tarps and rope in Paula's bamboo shelter, she heard a steady piano scale reverberate through the evening air. Walking to the front of the house, she felt herself grin ludicrously, unable to contain her elation at hearing a second more tentative scale slowly stumble upwards one octave higher. The precise lower scale repeated again as Raquel hopped up the steps into their open-walled house.

She looked left and saw Sergio had set up the keyboard on the dining table. He was seated, back to Raquel, his curved right hand resting on the keys. Paula was standing to his right, trying to mimic the shape of his hand. Raquel realized that Paula was standing because a chair would have left her too low. They would need a keyboard stand and bench to fit her daughter's size; she had no doubt that Sergio had a plan in mind. Raquel longed to step closer and peer over their shoulders as Sergio patiently coached and Paula listened, but Raquel knew that having an audience would make both of them self-conscious, so she quietly slipped around the kitchen island and washed her hands, leaving them be.

From the kitchen, she observed them from behind and could still see the sea beyond. The surface of the water twinkled enchantingly from the glancing rays of the lowering sun. Unobstructed panoramic views were why this house had seemed perfect—that, and the fact that it was surrounded by dense jungle and safely inaccessible by road.

Raquel retrieved a blade from the knife block and placed a cherrywood cutting board on the island as she heard Paula shakily attempt the scale again. Raquel eyed the braid of garlic, which hung beside the saucepans from the ceiling rack overhead. She reached up and tore off a healthy bulb, causing fine white flakes to gently fall on the counter and stove.

She enjoyed the sound of Sergio's voice as he calmly, not patronizingly, talked Paula through the process of crossing her thumb under the rest of her hand so she could press the fourth key in the series. Paula's first three notes resounded with measured confidence before the rest of the scale devolved into a series of concurrent key presses.

Raquel knew nothing about piano, but as she methodically cleaned the cloves of their papery sheaths and minced the fragrant garlic, pushing it with the side of her knife into a sticky heap, Sergio's explanations were so clear, she could visualize Paula's fingers slowly learning to dance upward to a new set of keys.

It was a shame that more kids couldn't receive the personalized education that Paula was being given. It was Raquel and Sergio's access to money that allowed them to not worry and to be able to spend time crafting experiences focused on her development. As the aromatic mound of minced garlic grew, Raquel felt her mind clicking into puzzle-solving mode. She wasn't sure of the history but she hypothesized that standardized school systems were an outgrowth of industrialized society. As adults commuted to jobs that kept them away from their kids at least ten hours a day, the rearing of children had become outsourced. Separated from family units and cultural ties, formal education had become a vehicle for establishing social norms, reinforcing homogeneity and mechanizing the development of the citizenry.

Here in the Philippines—as Raquel had learned from Daling's mom, Andat—Spanish missionaries had busily founded schools hundreds of years ago, propagating Spanish language and worldviews while conquistadors claimed land and resources, simultaneously colonizing their islands and their minds. The gender egalitarianism of this archipelago had systematically been eradicated by the mind virus of patriarchy and enforced by the violence of Spanish rule. Women and nonbinary shamans, known as _babaylan_, were beheaded and burned, defamed by the Spanish clergy as satanist witches. With every chop of her knife against the cutting board, Raquel felt herself channeling her rage that bayonets and bibles had devastatingly swept across these islands, drowning local values beneath a colonial tsunami.

Raquel gathered the garlic skin between her cupped hands and dumped it into the compost bin. As she surveyed the red onions Paula and Sergio had brought home today, she noted how mental indoctrination was even more insidiously dangerous than forced relocation. The Visayan language still retained its non-gendered pronoun, _siya_, but Daling had shared that words like _binabae_ and _bayot _had transformed in meaning from respected gender variants to derogatory terms. Raquel winced as she peeled the red onion skin and started slicing, refusing to slow down as her eyes watered and stung.

The Visayan cultural annihilation was so thorough, so complete, history had largely been erased and nonbinary gender conceptions had almost entirely been replaced. Revolts were quashed, dissenters murdered, and over four relentless centuries, nearly all remnants of genderfluid society had been extinguished by Catholic misogyny. Raquel was furious that Nani and Paula had to grow up on a planet where the disease of patriarchy had spread its toxic tendrils so far around the globe, it was choking all of humanity in its stranglehold. Raquel froze with surprise while dicing the third of three onions, hearing a clean alto scale that didn't sound like a hurried muddle for the first time.

"Mom!" Paula squealed. "Did you hear that?"

Paula whipped her neck around, proving she'd been keenly aware of Raquel's presence this whole time.

"I did, my love!" Raquel excitedly confirmed, meeting Paula's wide eyes with her own. "You're practicing so diligently," she emphasized.

"This is the perfect moment..." Sergio turned his neck and nodded to Paula. "...to pause for the night."

"Wait!" Paula yipped, grabbing his upper arm with her left hand. Paula's standing profile and his seated one perfectly framed the glinting ocean beyond. "I haven't heard you play a song yet. Please play me something."

"Oh," he sounded surprised as he blinked at Paula. He lifted his hand and needlessly pushed his glasses up his nose.

"Why are you nervous?" Paula wondered, furrowing her brow at him quizzically.

"That's a great question," he conceded, turning away to face the keyboard again. He lightly placed his hands on the keys, perhaps to give himself something to focus on while he mused. "Maybe because I'm more comfortable behind the scenes than in the spotlight."

"Oooh," Paula commiserated sympathetically, then patted his shoulder and smiled assuringly. "You'll do good, Sergio, I know. Besides, Mom loves you no matter what." Raquel quickly bit her lower lip to keep from laughing at her child's intuitive grasp of unconditional love. Paula twirled around and ran towards Raquel, apparently wanting to listen to Sergio together.

The back of his shoulders rose as he appeared to take a deep breath; he began playing a winding opening refrain. The notes swirled around one another, reconstructing a hazy memory in some part of Raquel's brain.

Raquel washed her hands and dried them on a dishtowel, then held Paula against her as they stood in the kitchen, gazing across the house at him. Paula comfortably leaned her head and shoulders back against Raquel's chest and stomach as Sergio's hands glided up and down the keys, segueing from the intro into a hauntingly familiar ragtime melody.

_It was the Scott Joplin song he'd played her in his decoy hangar._

She felt her face heat up as she recalled how little she'd known about him then—_not even his real name!_—and yet, how clearly she'd seen him, how deeply she'd understood him. The song was stirring such a wild mixture of emotion in her chest: the self-loathing and guilt when she'd realized that while she'd been staring doe-eyed at her music-making Clark Kent, Ángel had been frantically calling her on repeat, flipping his car, nearly ending his life.

She also, paradoxically, felt thankful for her actions. If she hadn't asked Sergio out and pursued the passionately irrational energy between them, none of them would be here today. She'd still be in Spain, tirelessly doing her job, consumed by her drive to make a meaningful social impact, growing secretly frustrated, increasingly disillusioned by the bigotry embedded in law enforcement and the classism inherent in the justice system. Her daughter would be at school with bullying children, their elitist parents raising the next generation of upper middle class conformists. Alberto would be lurking constantly in the periphery of her psyche, brazenly ignoring his restraining order, spiriting her daughter away repeatedly. And with the station and system stacked against her, Raquel would determinedly bear it and unflinching take it—modeling resilience for her daughter, but not revolt.

"I like this song," Paula decided, then tilted her neck back to make upside-down eye contact with her, apparently wanting to see if she agreed.

"Me too, sweetie," Raquel confirmed reflectively. "Me too."

The song ended and Sergio paused, leaving his hands over the keys longer than necessary, perhaps similarly trapped in a multilayered memory. The night he'd been away from his command console, eyes locked on her instead of his monitors, Oslo had received the blow to the head that had led to his death.

Sergio's shoulders were still. Raquel held her breath.

"That was so good!" Paula cheered merrily and clapped. "Will you teach me play like that?"

"Absolutely," he affirmed absently. He flicked off the power switch and stood up, then turned around to face them. His locked jaw was somber, his neck hunched, his cheeks pallid. He was a living ghost from the past: the nervous man in the red-tinted hangar who'd had so much at stake, who'd had so much to hide, and who, yet, had exuded an existential cry to be seen and loved by her—deeply wanting her to know all of him, deeply terrified that if she did, she'd forsake him.

Raquel longed to comfort him and pull him back to the present. She lifted her hand off Paula's shoulder and motioned for him to come closer. As he cautiously stepped forward, Paula broke away from Raquel's embrace and ran towards him, grabbing him in a tight hug.

The shock of the impact caused his eyes to widen. His stiff shoulders loosened as he reached down and tentatively placed his hands on Paula's back.

Paula closed her eyes and pressed the side of her face snuggly against his sternum. "Thank you for teaching me," she mumbled with a gravity that seemed to reference more than tonight's piano lesson.

He glanced up anxiously and searched Raquel's eyes while he gently stroked Paula's back, paternally.

Raquel felt her heart soar. She'd always been careful to refer to them as _guardians_ of a _household_, not _parents_ of a _family_. She hadn't wanted to pressure him, and, if she was being honest, she hadn't wanted to get her own hopes up about his desire to assume that lifelong responsibility.

Now, his dimples shyly emerged as if he could hear her heart grappling with the ineffable feeling that maybe he wasn't just her partner, he was her partner in their family.

His warm brown irises glistened. He nodded once at her solemnly, appearing to make a silent vow.

She felt her eyes teared in response as she accepted his unspoken offer to be there for Paula, no matter what the future held.

He tilted his chin down and gazed at her daughter with affection. "Good practice session," he commended. Paula relaxed her grip and looked up at him. "We'll do more tomorrow, okay?" he promised earnestly.

Paula smiled agreeably and released him from her embrace. "I'll practice my moves until then," she proclaimed. She lifted her right hand and moved her fingers against the air, crossing her thumb dexterously under her third finger and letting the rest flow upward in sequence.

He beamed at her, evidently affirming her technique.

Paula grinned proudly, then spun around, pigtails flying, and skipped towards the front room. "Bye Mom!" she called as she swiftly slipped on her sandals, then disappeared down the front steps, past the ficus trees to the left.

Sergio grinned tenderly and blinked the watery scrim from his eyes as he followed Paula's route through the house and down the steps. He walked a meter down the flagstone path and looked left, checking to see where she was headed.

Raquel, feeling completely besotted, tried to think of a simple task her hands could perform. She crouched by the rice tin and scooped dry grains into the metal cooker while she stilled her fluttering heart. She looked up when Sergio returned inside, gliding towards her with a settled smile. Behind him, banded steaks of orange and pink began to stretch across the sky, heralding the approach of another magnificent sunset. "She's making a beeline up the beach for your mom and Imoy," he verified, twirling between his forefinger and thumb a tiny stem with three bay leaves, which he'd apparently just plucked from the tree out front.

Raquel smiled, knowing her mom and Imoy would keep an eye on Paula as her child scoured the edge of the water for living mussels to return to the tide; she'd made it her personal mission to give the little mollusks a second chance at life. Raquel stood and placed the rice cooker on the counter as  Sergio arrived by her right side. He delicately lay the leaves on the chopping board, the deep green setting off the rich wood. She took a deep breath, resisting the urge to look up at him. Though he'd been out all day, carrying supplies in the sweltering heat, to her, his earthy musk smelled divine. She wanted to pause time and turn into him, luxuriate in his heady scent and sink against his skin, consummating this day, commemorating his unspoken commitment to parent her child, not because he felt obligated, but because he felt love. She glanced right at his handsome profile, actively reminding herself that the setting sun was their timepiece and they owed it to _their family_ to get dinner on the stove.

"Do you want to prep the chicken or make the marinade?" she breathily checked, then snickered at herself for her unintended wanton tone; her underlying desire had nothing to do with the content of her question.

"Your choice," he genuinely replied, turning his sparkling eyes to hers, his grin indicating that—like her—he was content doing anything in her presence.

"You put on a record, then mix the marinade," she decided. She strained up on her toes and briefly grazed his soft lips, placing one palm against his chest for balance.

He let out a mew as her heels returned to the floor. His eyes popped and he laughed, clearly surprised by his accidental sound. 

She joined him in laughing, delighted to discover that she wasn't the only one who wished they could take time for a diversionary side quest. She strained up and lightly brushed his lips again,  this time with both palms against his chest. The evening breeze picked up, as if warning her that they were already approaching sundown. He must have felt the gust too because as her lips fell away, he nodded hurriedly, agreeing that they needed to get cooking.

He placed his palms over the back of her hands, then gently lifted them off his chest. His fingers reluctantly separated from hers as he fluidly pivoted, then strolled away towards the vinyl shelf in the dining area. For a delicious second, she stared unabashedly at his backside before tearing her eyes away with a sigh.  She retrieved the chicken thighs from the fridge and set them in the sink as she heard the old record player click on with a buzz. 

A tentative piano melody entered her consciousness, each expressive note hinting at an undercurrent of raw emotion. The moving refrain skirted the edges of sorrow and hope, bliss and pain—rising enchantingly, then falling dramatically—conveying as much in its moments of hesitation as it did during its spikes of boldness.

Sergio appeared to her left and pulled the faucet towards him to wash his hands in the other side of the sink.

"What is this?" she whispered with awe, instantly regretting that she'd interrupted the melody, feeling—_bewilderingly_—like she'd interrupted a human voice eloquently delivering a confession of love.

"A Chopin nocturne. Opus nine, number one," he answered quietly, glancing down at her with shimmering eyes, his wistful smile a clue that this was a piece he loved.

She nodded to herself, committing the name to memory as he opened the cabinet over the sink to retrieve ingredients and shuttle them to the island counter behind her. Over the last few months, despite Sergio's devoted attempt to expose her to the history of classical music, she'd admittedly retained little. It hadn't captured her imagination until now. Maybe that was because this Chopin nocturne _wasn't_ a pretentiously grand attempt to summate a ruler's reign with an orchestral symphony. Instead, it was the voice of a single instrument on a humble wordless journey through the soul, every note playing a role in the evocative melody, painting a landscape that shifted from moment to moment, accurately channeling the vagaries of real life without a confounding layer of speech to dilute meaning.

She appreciated the soulful voyage the song was taking her on as she rinsed and dried the chicken and listened to Sergio working methodically behind her: pouring coconut vinegar and soy sauce in a large bowl, scraping the garlic and onions off the chopping board, grinding white and black peppercorns, whisking in brown sugar, and, though she couldn't claim to hear it, submerging the fresh bay leaves in the mix.

She was certain she'd never heard this song before, and yet, after mere minutes it already sounded deeply familiar, like she'd always known it and would always know it. With a gasp, she realized why: it felt like her voice. _If her__ heart could speak, this is what it would say._ She wanted to tell Sergio that she finally knew what he meant, and that she felt for herself how classical music could speak to—_and for_—the soul. The record transitioned to a second song, even more beautiful, even more self-possessed, building off the original melody with more surprising rising trills and apogees of hope. 

He reappeared to her left, this time holding a giant bowl of freshly made Filipino adobo marinade. She excitedly met his gaze, eager to communicate how taken she was with these Chopin nocturnes, but not wanting to talk over the melody, not even for a second. He grinned knowingly, maintaining his silence as if in a concert hall.

She carefully placed each piece of chicken in the marinade as he steadied the bowl. When she was done, he covered the bowl with a lid, then slid it into the fridge.

While she cleaned the sink, he got her attention in her peripheral vision. She glanced at him, then snickered at his adorable expression as he wordlessly held up two bottles of wine for her to choose from. She tilted her head towards the red. He smiled broadly.

She washed and dried her hands, then spun around. _The shocking sunset took her breath away._ Vibrant orange and pink streaks had expanded purposefully across the sky. Purple had also emerged, infusing the canvass with majestic gravitas. The surface of the water danced with spellbinding hues of orange, pink, and purple, swirling ethereally with the mystic shades of sea green and turquoise blue.

Sergio's was the only visage that could eclipse the sublimity of the sky. He always drew her eye; she knew he always would. He stood across the island from her in his pineapple-silk _barong_, alight with the sunset's exquisite grandeur and grace, as if the sun had been summoned to complement his beauty, a multifaceted backdrop against which his incomparable soul could shine. His deepening smile was divine.

He set the corked bottle on the island beside the two modest glasses of wine. She reached for one stem as he reached for the other. Side by side, they floated through the front room, compelled forward by the sunset, compelled forward by each other.

Without taking her eyes off the sky, she sat on the house steps. He joined her, sitting to her right.

The magnificent explosion of color was changing by the second, like the current nocturne, like their life. She didn't want to blink; she didn't want to miss a beat. She was grateful for all they had; they had everything because they had each other.

She sipped her wine, appreciating the woody smell and the sharpness on her tongue. She was grateful to be able to savor every shifting instant of being alive.

The stylus clicked as it reached the outer groove in the vinyl.

The chorus of cicadas came to the forefront of her senses, seamlessly becoming the newest song in her consciousness.

She glanced right, wondering if he wanted to flip the record or whether he was as content with the song of the cicadas as she was; Sergio's serene eyes gleamed. He took a sip of his wine, then set it on the ground. He placed his palms flat on the floor behind him and leaned back so his shoulders supported his slight recline. He extended his legs so they stretched down the steps, then crossed his ankles relaxedly.

She set down her wine, then reached for his thigh with her right hand. Her fingers slipped around the curve of his leg, relishing the solidity of his presence, enjoying his inherent sensuality. Her eyes returned to the sky.

A gentle guitar strum and stirring Spanish voice rose like hearth smoke from the ashes of her mind.

_Tantas veces me mataron_  
_Tantas veces me morí_  
_Sin embargo estoy aquí resucitando_  
_Gracias doy a la desgracia y a la mano con puñal_  
_Porque me mató tan mal_  
_Y seguí cantando_

Unbidden, the coals of the past relit a passion for justice, the wine infusing her with warmth from the inside out.

_Cantando al sol como la cigarra_  
_Después de un año bajo la tierra_  
_Igual que sobreviviente_  
_Que vuelve de la guerra_

She'd first heard _Like A Cicada_ in Lisbon during the anniversary of the Carnation Revolution. Mercedes Sosa had awoken her soul.

_Tantas veces me borraron_  
_Tantas desaparecí_  
_A mi propio entierro fui sola y llorando_  
_Hice un nudo del pañuelo pero me olvidé después_  
_Que no era la única vez_  
_Y seguí cantando_

_Cantando al sol como la cigarra  
Después de un año bajo la tierra  
Igual que sobreviviente  
Que vuelve de la guerra_

Some teenagers came of age through a book. Others, through a loss or love. For Raquel, it was hearing the voice of the voiceless incanting the song of survival by Maria Elena Walsh, the poet revolutionary.

_Tantas veces te mataron_  
_Tantas resucitarás_  
_Cuántas noches pasarás desesperando_  
_Y a la hora del naufragio y a la de la oscuridad_  
_Alguien te rescatará_  
_Para ir cantando_

_Cantando al sol como la cigarra_  
_Después de un año bajo la tierra_  
_Igual que sobreviviente_  
_Que vuelve de la guerra_

She held her breath as the sun headed towards its first touch of the horizon. Her breath resumed as she felt Sergio's hand slide over hers, squeezing her hand where it lay over his leg. The Philippine cicadas sang, their numbers growing, their decibels rising, their gathering voices rising in a choral vibrato of the masses as the blazing sun made fiery contact with the Earth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this was everything you needed, friends.


	12. Chapter 12

Raquel awoke to the sensation of cold air on her back. Through the darkness of her eyelids she could tell it was the middle of the night. She kept her eyes closed, not giving in to the temptation to spin up her mind, wanting instead to drift back to sleep.

Normally, the night crickets chirped and the flying beetles buzzed and the chorus of toads croaked, like an orchestra of white noise enveloping her and their house and their lives. But tonight, the jungle creatures were eerily quiet, as if they’d burrowed underground and gone dormant—as if they’d disappeared from the world.

The wind whistled restlessly through the coconut grove. The agitated waves crashed against the shore. A chill breeze—fresh off the ocean—gusted against her naked spine. She shivered.

She reached back with her left hand to find Sergio and pull him towards her so he could compress his chest against her and keep her warm like he always did on these rainy-season nights.

Her palm touched the cold mattress where he should have been. Her heart stopped.

She hurriedly sat up and opened her eyes. Her vision adjusted to the dark as she blinked left at the empty bed.

She squinted across their open house to the bathroom; there was no light under the door. _Where was he?_

Her heart quickened as she slipped her feet onto the tile floor and bent over to pick up her chemise. She’d pulled it up and over her head when she was astride him last night, after she was certain her mother and daughter were soundly asleep in their rooms. After she came a second time, she'd lowered herself to his side and draped her right arm and leg over his warm chest and thigh, feeling so deeply relaxed as he stroked her lower back, she'd fallen asleep without retrieving her simple shift.

Now, she held it up by the shoulder straps and snapped her wrists to make sure no creepy-crawlies had tucked themselves in its cotton folds. _All clear_.

She slipped it on while rapidly making her way across the shared living space. Padding past the kitchen island, she glanced at her mom's and Paula’s rooms._ The doors were closed. Nothing seemed amiss._

Swiftly, she stepped through the front room, compelled forward by a familiar feeling she hadn't experienced since she'd resigned from the force eighteen months ago: the drive to uncover answers. The gauzy white curtains, which hung from the rafters in lieu of an exterior wall, flapped towards her in ghostly silence. She looked down at the row of sandals by the entrance to their home and noticed the gap between her Birkenstocks and Paula's flip-flops.

She pushed the transparent fabric to one side and stared out at the jet-black ocean, its choppy surface glinting with menace. _He was nowhere in sight. _

Her eyes drifted upward. The stars and waning moon were blocked by a fleet of clouds—an ominous armada that had glided into place under the cloak of darkness and now lay in wait for the opportune moment to strike.

The expansive sea was suddenly like impenetrable obsidian, jagged angles shifting each second, taunting her for being a step behind and not knowing what he was doing, not knowing what he was thinking. She shivered at the chilling memory of that moment in The Hanoi when a single thread had forced her to acknowledge how blind she'd been and how little she'd known about the man seated across from her in the diner booth. She'd blinked with shock, realizing she'd invited the enemy into her bed. She'd gasped for breath in the restaurant bathroom; the mouse she’d thought she’d been chasing had masterfully baited her into a trap where every escape route would maim her forever. She'd checked the clip of her gun with tears in her eyes, asking herself whether she would kill him or her career, knowing that either way, her heart had already been shattered.

Horrified, she yanked her eyes away from the black glass of the goading ocean, then vigorously shook her head to shake off the outdated memory.

She hurried barefoot down the three front steps of their family's tranquil home, growing angry at her neural synapses for the traumatic recollection. For six incredible months, she'd fallen asleep and woken up beside the love of her life. There was no reason to panic just because he'd gone for an unexpected stroll tonight.

A cold gale blew off the ocean like a warning shot. She crossed her arms and gripped her biceps, unwilling to take the time to put on more clothes, wanting only to find her partner, wherever he was. The wind warned her with an even stronger blast. She refused to heed, pushing her body down the flagstone path past their palm trees and potted plants.

The trees to her left began to bend away from the sea, kowtowing submissively. A ceramic pot wobbled, threatening to topple. She heard the roof groan behind her, straining against the unseen pressure.

To her right she saw their boat rising and falling dramatically. She and Sergio had planned to ground it tomorrow based on the storm advisory. Evidently, they should've beached it before going to bed. She hadn't expected the tropical weather to transform so quickly over the South China Sea. Lightning flashed in a sprawling web across the horizon. Thunder boomed. The boat rose on a swell, then hurtled away from shore on the outgoing current, stopping suddenly, its mooring rope dangerously taut.

She glanced left up the beach and saw Sergio. _Her heart leapt. _

Thirty meters away and clearly unaware of her presence, he was standing shirtless at the water's edge, facing the angry sea. The pants her mom had sewn from the same fabric as her chemise billowed around his legs.

She felt herself break into a joyous jog. The anticipation of reunion caused her soaring heart to carry her faster than she would've thought possible at this hour. The soles of her feet pounded against the cool wet sand. Her loose hair whipped around her face and into her eyes as she ran.

She grinned with amusement as she closed the space between them, surprised he hadn't yet noticed her. She was so used him sensing her presence, like she sensed his. Perhaps the sky and sea were so visually arresting tonight, the wind so unusually loud, that his senses were otherwise filled. "Hey!" she lovingly called out, not wanting to startle him as she neared.

His neck whipped towards her. _His eyes were wide and haunted._

He seemed to register her presence yet remained fearful and frozen. She slowed her gait, not understanding.

She was always a calming balm for his limbic brain, just as he was for hers. If he'd had another nightmare—which he'd been having more of over the last two months—seeing her should bring him comfort, like it always did. He was only meters away, but she couldn't feel him in the aether; it was like his spirit was somewhere else—across the ocean, across time.

Cautiously, she stepped towards him. She thought she saw him flinch.

She reached up and moved her hair out of her eyes so she could better see him in the diffused light of the cloud-covered moon.

His damp eyes betrayed existential terror.

He was scared of _her_.


	13. Chapter 13

Sergio felt his mouth go dry.

Raquel stopped moving towards him. Her eyes transformed from empathy to concern as the night wind whipped her hair around her face.

She was barefoot on the cold wet sand, wearing only her white sleeping chemise. It billowed around her in the otherwise dark night. He thought he saw her shiver, but with the moon and stars blanketed by clouds, he couldn't be sure. He suspected she was cold but refusing to show it. He was cold, too. It was part of his penance.

"What's wrong?" she called out from two meters away, the urgent compassion in her voice rising over the restless wind and churning waves.

He wanted to say:_ please ignore me, please leave me, please go get warm and return to bed_. Yet he was mute, unable to speak. Even if he could, he knew his protests would be futile. She was as loyal to him as he was to her. That's what made this so painful.

Lightning flashed, illuminating their secluded beach. He saw that behind her, the palm trees leaned threateningly towards their family home, farther than he'd ever seen them bend; in the distance, their trusty boat strained against its mooring rope, yanking forcefully at its wooden pile,  like a dog that longed to be off its lead and didn't realize it was dangerous to be free. 

_Thunder cracked._ The pause between light and sound was shorter than the first burst a few minutes ago. The storm was off the coast. It would be here soon.

Raquel cleared the hair from her eyes and squinted at him, clearly trying to detect what he was thinking, what he was feeling.

He felt himself blink back, frozen in alarm, afraid she'd be able to read him. After all, they'd spent six blissful months attuning to one another, learning to read each other's expressions and gestures and moods. His desire to bare his soul  had been intuitive back in Madrid: he'd shared, he'd cried, he'd risked it all. He'd since learned that emotional intimacy took conscious effort, too.  She'd taught him vulnerability was a choice that had to be made every day. Diligently, he'd practiced sharing, discovering that no matter what he revealed, her affection was unwavering.  When he reverted to being a brooding lone wolf, she was patient. She coaxed him out of his mental den, again and again, reminding him he needn't weather the inner storms alone. Slowly, he'd learned to seek emotional shelter beside her. He'd gone from not relying on _anyone_ for _anything_ to needing Raquel in order to breathe, since she was _everything_.

"Did you have a nightmare?" Her steady soothing voice was a hearth he wanted to curl up beside. _He longed to warm his frozen soul! But he couldn't; he wouldn't. He didn't deserve it._

Behind her, dressed in a crisp white suit and smiling with brotherly pride, the ghost of Andrés materialized.

Sergio shivered, feeling chilled to the bone. He tried to clear the specter, aware it was just the projection of his anxious imagination.

Ghost Andrés shook his head with a grin, refusing to disappear, goading Sergio to admit the truth: _he'd__ risked everything for love._

Sergio nodded reluctantly, then realized he'd responded to both Raquel and Andrés.

Raquel's eyes melted with sympathy and she tentatively took a step towards him, her empty hands raised in front of her as if to show a skittish animal that she meant no harm.

Meanwhile, his brother extended his arms at his sides, his flat palms facing forward, like a proud performer who'd just completed his final act.

With every step Raquel took, Andrés took a step back.

Raquel tread closer and closer, growing more prominent in Sergio's vision as Andrés got smaller and smaller, smirking knowingly as he theatrically receded.

Raquel arrived within arm's reach, tilting her neck back to look at his face, her bare toes facing his sandaled ones. Beaming smugly, Andrés disappeared.

Lightning flashed, illuminating the whole beach. _Andrés was nowhere to be seen._ Thunder cracked. The center of the storm was near.

"My love, why are you crying?" Raquel gently spoke. He became aware of the hot tears in his eyes. They slid onto his cheeks and instantly turned cold, blown dry by the fierce wind. "Did you dream about your brother again?" Her eyes searched his.

He nodded with small movements, feeling his forehead crease since that wasn't the extent of it. Not this time.

"What else did you dream about?" she softly asked.

Two months ago, when he first acknowledged to himself that he, Raquel, Mariví, and Paula were a family, he'd started having dreams about Andrés. They always started pleasantly, hopefully, joyously in fact, with Andrés joining him and Raquel for a chicken adobo dinner, or with Andrés as his best man at a beachside commitment ceremony, or with Andrés playing chase with Paula at the edge of the water as he and Raquel stood watching with their arms around one another. Then, the sand would spin up into a cyclone of particulate matter and Andrés would dissolve before Sergio's eyes—his brother's skin transforming into sand, his distinctive grin falling as billions of grains plummeted to earth, governed by gravity, inevitability, and the reality that Andrés was dead.

Tonight was a particularly beautiful commitment ritual dream: him and Raquel clasping hands, him feeling flush with gratitude and joy, Andrés dramatically performing the ceremony between them. Paula and Mariví were watching with broad smiles, entertained by Andrés's flair,  and behind them, dressed in finer clothing than he'd ever seen them wear, were Moscow and Oslo. As part of his officiant's speech, Andrés said the word _family _and it reverberated through the air. Then, the sandstorm began.

Oslo's eyes widened, the sand swirling up around his feet, turning his legs, then chest, then head into sand. He fell to earth as a billion indistinct granules. Next, Moscow's fatherly smile froze in rictus as his body was swallowed by sand spinning upward. Sergio tried leaping for Moscow, but his limbs wouldn't move. He tried calling out, but forgot how to speak. The last he saw of his friend were his goodnatured eyes. Moscow fell to earth as a pile of dirt. In a panic, Sergio swiveled his neck to Andrés but saw he was already too late. The sand that was once his brother was suspended in the air. It fell into an unmarked mound at Sergio's feet. Desperately looking down, Sergio noticed his own bare toes were still facing Raquel's in a ceremonious pose.

He'd woken up, sweating despite the cold night. The jungle creatures were silent, as if he'd killed them too. That's when he knew the inescapable truth: He wasn't the savior of the gang, no matter what they thought. He wasn't their protector. He wasn't their benefactor. He'd hurt them. He'd used them. He'd  killed Oslo, Moscow, and Andrés.

And he'd done it because of his love for Raquel.

When did Oslo get cracked in the skull with a pipe?  When Sergio was with Raquel in his decoy hangar, making love to her for the first time, inviting her, asking her, to stay with him for the night.  When was Moscow shot in the gut? When Sergio was with Raquel in the Toledo attic,  sitting compliantly on a chair, cuffed wrists in his lap, tearfully telling her everything, confessing he'd fallen in love.  And when was Andrés's fate sealed? When Sergio was with Raquel who stood chained in his dank hangar, tasting his tears as he tasted hers, their passionate kiss an unspoken vow.

In each instance, if he’d been focused on the gang instead of on Raquel, he could've executed his plan and preserved everyone's lives. He could have been at his console, watching his monitors and warning his crew, preventing the hostages' escape. He could've been at his phone to receive Tokyo's call, directing her where to drive, preventing her reckless return to the mint. He could've implored Nairobi to stop printing sooner, ordering everyone through the tunnel, preventing his older brother's sacrificial last stand.

Sergio could never forgive himself for his periodic absence from his crew's side during the heist. He could've navigated their volatile infighting, even his brother's unforgivable psychopathy, if he'd been at his control center instead of in bed with the very person his team saw as the enemy.

So when he awoke tonight and found himself curled snugly around Raquel's back, pressed safely against the love of his life, he was overcome with the horror of what he'd done. The sweet euphoria he had the privilege of experiencing every day had been purchased at the steep price of three lives.

He'd silently wept while blinking at the back of her neck, his tears falling on her soft hair, which lay on their shared pillow. He didn't deserve this existence; he didn't deserve to exist. He hadn't earned this life; he'd stolen it from Oslo, Moscow, and Andrés.

Not wanting to wake her, he'd bit the inside of his lip until he drew blood. He'd carefully slipped out of bed and slipped on his pants, stumbling outside in a daze, engulfed immediately by the tempestuous sea and sky. Guilt swallowed him whole, like the storm descending from above, transporting him somewhere torturous—out of space, out of time—to deep within his own mind.

He'd sobbed, then wailed. The wind and water rose in violent ecstasy to meet the intensity of his grief.

"May I touch you?" Raquel requested, her voice sensitive yet imperative, bringing him back to the present.

He looked down and met her powerful loving gaze. His heart seized at the sight. _He was the recipient of unconditional love he didn't deserve._

"You're looking at me strangely,” she remarked worriedly. “It's me, dear. I'm not the enemy."

"You're right," he croaked. "But I am."

She blanched. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm not a hero, I'm not a saint..." His words poured out of him, like a dam that finally broke. "...far from it."

She tilted her head, her gaze empathetic. "No one's perfect, that's what being human..."

"I'm not talking about imperfection..." He felt terrible for interrupting, yet couldn't seem to stop talking."...I'm talking about monstrosity."

"You're not a monster, my love," she insisted, eyes welling.

"I am," he vehemently countered. "I traded away the lives of the crew because I was selfishly falling in love with you..."

“You didn't know..."

"...I led them into the lion's den and left them there to die."

"...You didn't do it on purpose!"

"Didn't I? I knew lives were at stake..."

"Please, be kind to yourself..." she pleaded. Tears were rolling down her cheeks now, perhaps frustrated that she couldn't console him.

"...I knew the risks of leaving my knight and rook and bishop exposed, and apparently I didn't care..."

"Sergio," she invoked his name forcefully. He refocused on her eyes. Her resolute gaze reminded him of their immutable bond, which felt like it transcended lifetimes. "Don't forsake what we have."

He took a deep breath, then nodded. "I _don't_ forsake what we have. That's what scares me."  He'd been forced to choose between his only love and his only brother. And he _had_ chosen, whether he'd been cognizant of it or not.

"Do you regret it?" she asked in a hushed tone. "Do you regret meeting me during the heist?" Her pupils trembled.

He looked away towards the roiling sea._ This was exactly why he’d slipped out of bed tonight! _He didn’t want to expose her to his trauma. He didn’t want her to share his guilt. Most of all, he didn’t want her to mistake his self-hatred for resentment.

He felt her strong hands grip both of his cheeks. She turned his face back to hers. "Do you blame me?"

"No," he blurted honestly. "Not at all."  She let her hands fall, squinting skeptically. He felt a maelstrom of emotion—regret, remorse, self-loathing—but not blame. She’d thought she was spending time with a random cider enthusiast; he'd knowingly endangered all their lives. As chief inspector, she'd put her career on the line to prevent a loss of life; as leader of the team, he'd failed his primary responsibility three times. "You were doing your job,” he elaborated. “I should've done mine." 

Her eyes radiated with empathy.

He startled as her fingers slipped around his. She gently raised their hands between them, caressing the backs of his hands with her thumbs. He looked down and felt his heart pump faster, recognizing that where their hands touched, he felt warm, safe, and alive. The rest of him was shivering, frightened, and numb. He hadn't noticed until now.

"Did you know," she spoke carefully, "that when you were with me, playing piano, making love to me on your uncomfortable couch..." She smiled at the shared memory of them falling off a few times. "...that the hostages were plotting an escape?"

"No," he answered logically, shaking his head.

"Did you know that Tokyo would _idiotically_ return to the mint and spark a firefight?"

"Of course not," he admitted, surprised to discover that she'd mentally mapped the concurrencies in the heist timeline. _But of course she had! They were each other's soul match in every way._

"And that’s why you're not a monster, darling. You're human. Human like the rest of us. You don't have godly powers, even if you sometimes think you do, even if _I_ sometimes think you do..." She grinned rakishly; he reflexively returned her smile. He knew she was referring to her spiritual incantations when she dug her fingers into his scalp and he ensconced himself between her legs, helping her crest wave after stunning wave. She'd always remarked at the divine stamina of his fingers and tongue; he'd pointed out that he was just mirroring her insatiable desire, her rapturous power.

"Remember," she reasoned, "I was on the other end of the phone with you. Your team had weapons but you only wanted them used as stage props to _avoid_ violence..."  He nodded. She squeezed his hands. "...I know you, Sergio. You would never knowingly take a life."

_ That wasn't true. _

_ One time, he had planned to. _

He dropped his hands, returning them to his sides. She furrowed her brow, clearly wondering why he'd pulled away.

_The warmth that had rekindled within him vanished in a whoosh._

_She deserved to know. He owed her the truth._

"Raquel..." he started, his throat feeling parched. "That's not true. There was one time I considered it..."

She calmly looked at him with unflinching compassion. "And did you go through with it?" she asked knowingly. 

He shook his head.

She lifted her eyebrows as if that proved her point.  "Let me guess," she patiently continued. "Your life was at stake. You were facing someone bigger, stronger, more heavily armed..."

He shook his head urgently.  "I want to be the person you think I am, but I'm not..." He felt his tears return, instantly becoming cold streaks on his windblown cheeks. "If this changes how you feel about me, I understand..." He was confessing to her again, just like he had back in Spain. If this was it, it was fitting that their relationship end the same  way it began. "...You deserve to know. You deserve to make an informed choice. If you decide you don't want to be with me after hearing..."

"Sergio, don't be silly," she cooed.

"Do you remember the day that you came home from the tent sedated and I was having coffee with your Mom?"

"Of course," she answered.

"I was there on a mission."

"I don't understand." Her brows creased.

"The night before, when your voicemail was full, Ángel called your house and left a message..."

"How do you know?" she asked with trepidation.

"Because your Mom called me, saying she hadn't been able to reach you, and asked if I could relay a message to you..."  He thought he could hear her heart race, then realized it was his own.

"What was the message?" Her voice was steely.

He inhaled deeply. "We have him: the guy who's been helping from the outside..."  He watched her chest rise and fall with increasing speed as he spoke. "...It's the cider maker. The one in the scrapyard. His fingerprints were in the patrol car..."

"Please stop," she pronounced, lifting her palm and closing her eyes.

"I'm sorry," he apologized. 

Her eyes remained shut. "And when I got home, I interrupted you from..."

"Oh, no. No, no," he clarified. "I couldn't go through with it. I'd changed my mind. I knew I couldn't hurt anyone, especially not your Mom. To tell you the truth, sitting across from her over coffee was  the first time I articulated to myself that I was falling in love with you..."

"I need to sit down..." she mumbled, looking down at the wet sand around her, her palms facing the ground, clearly seeking balance.

He reached out to provide support.

She lurched back, away from his hands, stumbling to one knee and catching herself with her palms against the sand. She glanced up, her stricken eyes meeting his. "Please don't touch me," she directed firmly.

He nodded as she slowly stood up,  respecting her request, feeling his heart dissolve into a million grainy pieces, wishing more than anything that he could soothe her, yet knowing he was the cause of her disorientation.

_ Lightning and thunder erupted simultaneously overhead. _

Past Raquel's shoulder, up the illuminated beach, he saw the angry waves crash against the mooring pile.

Their boat was gone.


End file.
